An Australian company went from a $1.85B valuation to $15B in about 11 months. The company is Firmus, and the climb tells you a lot about where AI money is going.
The ladder
In September 2025 Firmus was worth about $1.85B when Nvidia backed a $330M raise. A few weeks before April 2026 it raised at $6B. In April it raised US$505M at $8B. In August it raised another US$2B (A$2.85B) at $15B, with Coatue and Nvidia returning, Blackstone funds coming in, and Jane Street joining.
What it does
Firmus was founded in Sydney in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee, and started out mining bitcoin. It now builds AI data centres designed around the power and cooling that AI training eats. It has raised more than US$3B in about 12 months to fund Project Southgate, a national rollout put at $73B. Startup Daily describes it as Singapore-based with a Sydney headquarters.
The number that matters
Cut Through Venture’s June quarter report put total Australian startup funding at about $1.7B. Firmus ($725M) and Airwallex ($460M) took around 70% of it. Take those two out and the other 62 venture deals shared roughly $500M.
My read
When people say Australian AI is booming, a lot of the time they mean two companies. Firmus is a genuine story, but the headline totals hide how thin the rest of the market was that quarter.