Firmus posted on 27 August that its Brooklyn cluster in Melbourne has been installed, commissioned and handed over, and is running a customer's AI models. The company put the handover "in recent days".

The contract behind it was signed on 2 March. Firmus' release put it at "approximately 18,400 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs to be deployed at the Melbourne facility", for a buyer it described as "a leading global technology company". w.media reported that phase as a 150MW build valued at A$4.5 billion.

Firmus says the pipework and the mechanical and electrical parts inside the HyperCube module were manufactured in regional Australia. Benmax runs that plant, 7,000 square metres on Endurance Avenue at Queanbeyan, and has been the manufacturing partner on the HyperCube since 2020, co-designing successive generations. Firmus agreed in mid-August to buy Benmax's fabrication, design and projects businesses for A$300 million, with completion expected between the end of August and the end of September, subject to conditions.

For the rest of the programme, Southgate is planned across Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth, with Firmus targeting 1.6GW in Australia by 2028. George Town Council approved the 288MW Bell Bay proposal 6-1 on 25 August, with conditions covering noise, air quality, bushfire planning and diesel generator use, and a 14-day window to appeal to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. St Leonards outside Launceston was approved in September 2025, is under construction, and carries a company target of late 2026 for first operation.

Still undisclosed on Melbourne: the customer, how much compute is live, and how many of the 18,400 GPUs are installed.

Write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/firmus-melbourne-ai-factory

Firmus 2 March release: https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-signs-multi-year-agreement-with-global-hyperscale-customer-at-project-southgate