Project Southgate is approved by Launceston City Council
Firmus' data center project in Launceston, Tasmania, has been endorsed by the local city council.
The data center campus, described as an "AI Factory," will be located in St Leonards and span 5 hectares of land.
Approval of the project was first reported by The Mercury.
The campus - dubbed Project Southgate - will feature two server halls, an office building, and associated infrastructure. It will be powered by renewable energy.
The project is being worked on with the Tasmanian Government, and will deliver a combined 90MW of AI infrastructure by 2026 in the first stage — with 44MW delivered under Stage 1a, and Stage 1b doubling capacity to 90MW. A further 300MW second stage is planned to follow, subject to final approvals.
Stage 1a is expected to see AU$2.1 billion (US$1.37bn) in investment.
Mayor Matthew Garwood said: “This project really puts Launnie on the map as a hub for digital innovation.
“It’s about more than just data. It’s about harnessing Tasmania’s renewable energy advantage and making sure our city is at the forefront of Australia’s AI and tech economy."
Firmus currently operates an R&D facility in Tasmania. Founded in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield, and Jonathan Levee, the Tasmania site was originally its flagship data center. The company initially was focused on high-performance compute and specialized in immersion cooling, but today describes itself as a pure AI factory builder.
In more recent years, Firmus' AI cloud offering was migrated to STT GDC data centers in Singapore, where it offers access to Nvidia H100 GPUs in a liquid-cooled data center via the company’s cloud platform, SMC. The SMC site says AI factories in India and Thailand are “coming soon.”
Firmus is an Nvidia partner, and earlier in July announced it had joined the GPU maker’s Lepton cloud marketplace.
In June, Firmus raised AU$280 million ($180m) in preparation for going public on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Source: DCD
