Nvidia-Backed Firmus Lands OpenAI as Anchor Customer for Malaysia AI Data Centres: Asia-Pacific's Compute Race Accelerates

Posted on 8th Sep 2026 06:04:05 in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Tagged as: AI infrastructure, data centres, OpenAI, Nvidia, Malaysia, Vera Rubin

Australia's Firmus has signed a multi-year deal to supply OpenAI with computing capacity from two Malaysian data centres, making the ChatGPT maker an anchor customer for the Nvidia-backed infrastructure company as the global scramble for AI compute intensifies.

Announced on Tuesday, September 8, the agreement lifts Firmus' contracted capacity across its customer base to more than 900 megawatts (MW) — a milestone that arrives just ahead of the company's rumoured initial public offering this year, which analysts say could rank among Australia's largest listings in recent years.

The deal is the latest signal that the world's leading AI labs are locking in dedicated compute far beyond their home markets. OpenAI unveiled its most capable model yet, Astra, only last week, and the race between American and Chinese AI groups to secure power, chips, and data centre space now stretches across the Asia-Pacific region.

Inside the Deal: An Anchor Customer and a 900 MW Milestone

Firmus described the agreement as a multi-year supply contract covering computing capacity from two data centres in Malaysia, with OpenAI serving as an anchor customer. Neither company disclosed the contract value — Firmus declined to comment on financial terms, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The headline number is the 900 MW threshold: with the OpenAI contract included, Firmus' contracted capacity across all customers now exceeds 900 megawatts, a scale that would place it among the more significant AI infrastructure operators in the region. For context, the two data centres that anchor the new deal sit within a portfolio that includes two operational AI data centres in Australia and Singapore, with five more under development across Asia-Pacific.

Timing matters as much as scale. The agreement lands ahead of a widely rumoured IPO that could be one of Australia's largest in recent years, with some reports pegging a potential listing at around $15.5 billion. Signing a flagship customer like OpenAI strengthens the revenue story that any prospectus would need to tell — recurring, contracted demand from the industry's most prominent lab.

Who Is Firmus? The Nvidia-Backed AI Factory Builder

Firmus has become one of the fastest-rising names in AI infrastructure in less than a year. In August, the company raised $2 billion in equity at a post-money valuation above $10.5 billion — nearly double the $5.5 billion valuation it commanded in April. The round drew follow-on participation from Nvidia and Coatue Management, alongside funds managed by Blackstone and Jane Street.

The chip giant's involvement goes beyond capital. Firmus builds its facilities on Nvidia's DSX AI Factory Reference Architecture, and in late June the two companies struck a deal for Firmus to purchase Nvidia infrastructure and sell Nvidia-powered cloud services. Firmus says it will deploy Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin processors at scale across Asia-Pacific, with Malaysia extending that footprint further into Southeast Asia.

Company leadership has framed the strategy around speed. "This investment allows us to move on multiple fronts at once," Co-CEO Oliver Curtis said after the August raise. "We're scaling across Australia while fast-tracking our capacity to expand into the wider Asia-Pacific region." The OpenAI contract suggests that expansion is now translating into signed, anchor-grade demand.

Why Malaysia? Southeast Asia's Fastest-Growing Data Centre Market

Malaysia's selection for the OpenAI deal is no accident. The country — particularly the southern state of Johor, which borders Singapore — has become Southeast Asia's fastest-growing data centre market, absorbing a wave of investment from hyperscalers and infrastructure specialists seeking alternatives to Singapore's constrained power and land supply.

That boom has not come without friction. The rapid buildout has drawn scrutiny over electricity and water consumption, and local communities have questioned whether gigawatt-scale facilities deliver proportional economic benefit. Firmus' expansion into the market will face the same sustainability questions that now follow every major data centre announcement in the region.

For OpenAI, Malaysia offers something every frontier lab now prizes: speed to deployment. Building compute capacity in mature Western markets increasingly means queueing behind power-grid upgrades and multi-year construction timelines. Southeast Asia's combination of available land, proximity to undersea cable routes, and fast-track permitting has turned it into a pressure-release valve for the industry's capacity crunch.

The Bigger Picture: A Global Race for Power and Compute

The Firmus–OpenAI agreement is one data point in a broader, accelerating contest. Over the past month alone, Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion, backed OpenAI's Ohio data centre buildout with a $105 billion guarantee, and watched Chinese labs and cloud providers push aggressively into open-weight frontier models. Every major AI group is now bidding for the same scarce inputs: GPUs, gigawatts, and the time required to bring both online.

Firmus' trajectory illustrates how quickly private capital has re-rated AI infrastructure. Investors who once crowded into model labs are increasingly funding the physical layer instead — the companies that own racks, cooling systems, and power contracts. "The pace at which Firmus has re-rated demonstrates how private capital views AI infrastructure as one of the few capital-scarce opportunities in global markets right now," said Emanuel Ajay Datt, managing director of investment manager Datt Group, after the August round.

For OpenAI, deals like this one do more than add capacity. They diversify risk. Spreading inference and training workloads across multiple geographies and vendors reduces dependence on any single market, supplier, or regulatory environment — a consideration that has grown sharper as the company navigates scrutiny from both Washington and Brussels.

What to Watch Next

Several threads will determine whether this deal matters beyond a single press release. First, the IPO: if Firmus lists this year at the rumoured scale, it would give public markets their most direct look yet at the economics of AI infrastructure outside the hyperscalers. Second, execution in Malaysia: converting a signed contract into operational, powered data centres is where infrastructure deals historically stumble. And third, competition: with five sites under development across Asia-Pacific, Firmus is positioning itself as a neutral compute supplier at a moment when every lab is scrambling for capacity.

The contract value remains undisclosed, and both companies have kept details thin. But the strategic message is clear enough: the AI industry's next bottleneck is not model quality — it is the physical infrastructure needed to run those models. And the race to secure it has moved, decisively, to the Asia-Pacific.

Sources

• Reuters — Nvidia-backed Firmus signs deal with OpenAI for Malaysia data centre capacity
• Reuters — Firmus nearly doubles valuation to over $10.5 billion in Nvidia-backed fundraise
• The Economic Times — Nvidia-backed Firmus signs deal with OpenAI for Malaysia data centre capacity
• U.S. News & World Report — Nvidia-Backed Firmus Signs Deal With OpenAI for Malaysia Data Centre Capacity
• The Australian — OpenAI now a Firmus customer in Malaysian AI factories