Meta has agreed to lease AI compute capacity from Australian neocloud operator Firmus' upcoming data center deployments in Southeast Asia, extending a partnership that began with Nvidia GB300 NVL72 compute leased at Firmus' Melbourne facility.

The new agreement ties Meta to Firmus' so-called "AI factories" currently under development in Southeast Asia together with data center operator DayOne. The flagship site in Batam, Indonesia, is expected to house 170,000 GPUs. Firmus is also building data centers in Malaysia, where OpenAI is set to be a customer.

Firmus will integrate its HyperCube modular data center solution into these facilities. The company announced in August 2026 that it would acquire the manufacturing business behind HyperCube from Benmax. Compute capacity delivered to Meta in Southeast Asia will run on Nvidia's full-stack DSX platform.

Gaya Nagarajan, Meta's vice president of engineering and infrastructure, framed the deal as long-term infrastructure strategy. "We see Firmus as a long-term strategic infrastructure partner as we build for the next generation of AI across Asia-Pacific and expand the infrastructure supporting our AI research and model development efforts – the foundation of personal superintelligence," Nagarajan said.

Tim Rosenfield, co-founder and co-CEO of Firmus, positioned the deal around engineering efficiency. "We're building for partners at the forefront of AI, whose models demand exceptional performance and who want to get the most compute from every watt of energy. That's the engineering challenge Firmus was founded to solve," Rosenfield said.

He added: "Meta's AI research and model development activities require infrastructure capable of supporting some of the world's most demanding AI workloads. Firmus' AI factory build-out across Asia-Pacific has the scale to support and grow these ambitions."

The Meta contract adds to a rapidly expanding customer base for Firmus. Earlier this month, OpenAI signed a capacity agreement covering the Malaysia data centers, bringing Firmus' total contracted capacity to more than 900MW.

The company is also reportedly preparing a move into public markets. Reports earlier this month indicated Firmus is looking to raise up to $5 billion in an initial public offering.

Founded in 2019, Firmus initially focused on crypto and high-performance compute, specializing in immersion cooling. The company now describes itself as a pure AI factory builder. Its project pipeline spans Australia — including three sites in Tasmania — and Asia, with deployments in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

For Meta, the agreement adds Asia-Pacific capacity to support its AI research and model development workloads, which the company has identified as foundational to its stated goal of building personal superintelligence. For Firmus, landing a second hyperscale-class customer within a single month — following the OpenAI deal — signals demand for its AI factory model across the region.