Firmus, a company that started out mining Bitcoin, has raised $2 billion in fresh equity to build AI data centers across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, pushing its post-money valuation above $10.5 billion — nearly double the $5.5 billion it was worth in April.
The round was led by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, a new backer, alongside Jane Street, also joining for the first time. Existing investors Nvidia and Coatue both increased their stakes, according to crypto.news. Firmus has now raised more than $3 billion in equity over the past year as it races to build out compute capacity.
From Mining Rigs to AI Factories
The capital will accelerate what Firmus calls Project Southgate, its AI factory buildout across Australia built around a proprietary platform called HyperCube, which runs on Nvidia's DSX AI Factory Reference Architecture. The company has already stood up Australian manufacturing capacity for HyperCube and struck a deeper partnership with Nvidia in June covering infrastructure purchases and Nvidia-powered cloud services. Beyond Australia, Firmus is now in early-stage development in Indonesia to serve AI-native customers as it expands further into the Asia-Pacific region.
Related: Ex-SEC Official Warns Quantum Computing Is Crypto's 'Ticking Clock'
Part of a Broader Industry Shift
Firmus's transformation mirrors a wider trend among publicly traded Bitcoin miners, many of which have leaned on hyperscaler demand for AI compute to escape the volatility of mining economics. IREN has signed a five-year Microsoft partnership worth roughly $9.7 billion tied to 76,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs, while Core Scientific has built close to $10 billion in contracted revenue through its CoreWeave agreements. Industry analysts now expect AI and high-performance computing to account for as much as 70% of revenue at several transformed miners by year's end, up from single digits just two years ago.
Why It Matters for Bitcoin Mining
Firmus's raise underscores how quickly capital has rotated out of pure-play mining and into AI infrastructure, with investors valuing compute capacity and hyperscaler contracts far above the economics of hashing power alone. For a company that built its business on Bitcoin mining, a $10.5 billion valuation on the back of an AI pivot is a sign of how thoroughly the calculus has shifted for miners willing to repurpose their power contracts and data center footprints toward AI workloads instead.
