OpenAI Becomes Anchor Customer of Nvidia-Backed Firmus for Malaysian AI Factories

OpenAI has signed a multi-year strategic partnership with Firmus Technologies that makes the ChatGPT maker an anchor customer of two Firmus AI Factory sites in Malaysia, the companies announced Monday — the clearest sign yet that Southeast Asia is becoming a first-tier destination for frontier AI compute.

The deal

Under the agreement, OpenAI will contract dedicated AI compute capacity from the Malaysian facilities, pushing Sydney-headquartered Firmus past 900 megawatts of total contracted capacity across all customers. Firmus will deploy Nvidia's Vera Rubin accelerated computing platform at scale across Asia-Pacific as part of the partnership.

Firmus operates a portfolio of seven AI factories across Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Two sites — in Australia and Singapore — are operational today, with the remaining five under development and targeted for service within 24 months.

Why Malaysia

Malaysia has aggressively courted AI infrastructure with cheap land, improving grid capacity and proximity to Singapore's connectivity hub, and Johor in particular has absorbed billions in data center investment. For OpenAI, which has been diversifying compute beyond its US Stargate sites, dedicated capacity in Southeast Asia puts inference closer to hundreds of millions of users across the region — and hedges against power constraints at home.

The deal follows OpenAI's establishment of a Singapore office and its stated ambition to join the region's "thriving AI ecosystem." It also lands days after Nikkei reported Japan's AI data center capacity is set to quadruple by 2033, underscoring how quickly Asia-Pacific compute is scaling.

IPO runway for Firmus

Firmus was valued above $10.5 billion in its last fundraising, backed by Nvidia, Jane Street, Blackstone funds and Coatue Management, and received a $10 billion boost for its Project Southgate rollout earlier this year. An anchor deal with OpenAI arrives ahead of a potential initial public offering this year that could rank among Australia's largest — and gives public-market investors exactly the kind of blue-chip revenue commitment they have been demanding from AI infrastructure listings.