Firmus Technologies To Acquire Benmax’s Fabrication And Design Businesses For $300 Million

AI infrastructure company, Firmus Technologies, has entered into a binding agreement to acquire the fabrication, design and projects businesses of Canberra-based HVAC and mechanical services firm, Benmax, for A$300 million.

The acquisition brings the design, fabrication and construction of Firmus’ modular HyperCube AI Factory system in-house, consolidating what has been a six-year manufacturing partnership into a single operating model. Firmus described the move as strengthening its vertically integrated AI Factory Platform by bringing design, fabrication, construction and operations together.

On completion, the deal will more than double Firmus’ global workforce to 340 and bring Benmax Managing Director, Scott Polsen, into Firmus as Chief Development Officer.

What Firmus is building

Firmus Grid Limited, trading as Firmus Technologies, designs, builds and operates purpose-built data centres for AI workloads – what the company calls AI Factories. The company was founded in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee, initially focusing on cryptocurrency mining and high-performance compute before pivoting to AI infrastructure.

Curtis was convicted of insider trading in 2016 and served approximately one year in prison before co-founding the business that became Firmus.

The company has since grown into one of the more heavily capitalised AI infrastructure players in the Asia-Pacific region. In February 2026, Firmus closed a US$10 billion debt financing facility led by Blackstone and Coatue Management. In April, it raised US$505 million in equity from Coatue and Nvidia at a US$5.5 billion valuation – its third equity raise in six months, bringing total equity raised in that period to approximately US$1.35 billion. Most recently, the company secured a further US$3.1 billion from Blackstone, Coatue and Nvidia.

The company has been planning an IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange, with Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgans Financial and Morgan Stanley involved.

Firmus’ flagship project is Project Southgate, a A$4.5 billion initial construction programme centred on a purpose-built campus in Launceston, Tasmania, which could reach up to 1.6 gigawatts of capacity over three years. The company also has operating infrastructure in Singapore, has adapted its HyperCube platform for an existing CDC Data Centres facility in Melbourne and in June 2026 announced a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build a 170,000-GPU AI Factory campus in Batam, Indonesia.

The HyperCube at the centre of the deal

The HyperCube is the physical building block of Firmus’ AI Factory model – a self-contained, modular unit designed to house 32 NVL racks in a liquid-cooled, high-density configuration. The units are manufactured in regional New South Wales and can be shipped and deployed as needed, enabling Firmus’ AI Factories to be assembled more rapidly than conventional data centre builds.

The system uses advanced liquid cooling, mechanical integration and electrification to reduce energy and water consumption. Firmus claims its greenfield campus designs can operate without water cooling for more than 350 days per year, using up to 99 per cent less water than a typical data centre.

Benmax has been the manufacturing partner behind the HyperCube since 2020, co-designing and producing successive generations of the platform. The A$300 million acquisition formalises that relationship and brings the fabrication capability directly into the Firmus operating structure.

Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Firmus, Oliver Curtis, framed the deal as driven by the need to control execution as the company scales.

“Our ability to execute is everything,” Curtis remarked. “Bringing this capability into Firmus extends our vertically integrated AI Factory Platform across design, fabrication and project delivery, supporting our ability to continue innovating as we scale efficiently and responsibly. Scott is a unique operator, and the Benmax team has been instrumental in the evolution of the HyperCube platform.”

“Just as importantly, this is an investment in Australian people and advanced manufacturing, strengthening our ability to build AI infrastructure in Australia, supporting our growth across the Asia Pacific region,” he added.

What Benmax brings

Benmax was founded in 1986 by a group of HVAC professionals who had been working on Canberra’s Parliament House. The company is based in Queanbeyan, NSW and has grown into a full-service operation managing every stage of the mechanical lifecycle in-house, from design and engineering through to fabrication, construction and maintenance. It operates across Canberra, Sydney and Newcastle with a dedicated 7,000 square metre fabrication and assembly facility.

The family-run business has completed projects including the $203 million Research School of Physics and Engineering at the Australian National University and the $196 million Civic Quarter Tower 2 in Canberra’s CBD.

In November 2025, Benmax was named as a services provider for Firmus’ Project Southgate campus in Tasmania, with the company noting it would add engineering, manufacturing and skilled tradespeople and work with TAFE providers to build skills pathways connecting local talent to careers in advanced manufacturing and AI infrastructure operations.

Benmax Managing Director, Scott Polsen, described the acquisition as the natural progression of the partnership.

“This is the culmination of years of designing, building and refining the platform together,” Polsen explained. “Every generation of the HyperCube has made the next one better, and now we’re deploying it across multiple continents at the same time. It shows what’s possible when you’ve got great people, Australian manufacturing and a shared vision.”

Vertical integration as strategy

The acquisition reflects a broader strategic direction for Firmus – bringing as much of the AI Factory value chain as possible under its own control. The company has described its model as “vertically integrated from model to grid”, using proprietary energy and cooling technology rather than relying on third-party infrastructure.

Firmus argues that consolidating the AI Factory value chain is expected to improve deployment speed, capital efficiency and operating performance, supporting a lower cost per unit of AI compute and reducing complexity. The company uses the phrase “cost of token production” to describe this metric, reflecting its framing of AI Factories as production facilities rather than traditional data centres.

The move is also connected to Firmus’ expansion across the region. In Australia, the company delivers end-to-end AI Factory developments, while in Southeast Asia the HyperCube will be integrated into projects delivered with regional build partner, DayOne. Manufacturing activity from the acquired Benmax businesses will support both Australian and Southeast Asian deployments.

The competitive context

Firmus operates in an increasingly competitive market for AI infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region. The demand for GPU-dense, liquid-cooled data centre capacity has intensified as enterprises, cloud providers, sovereign customers and AI companies seek compute infrastructure closer to their operations and within data sovereignty boundaries.

The company’s approach – designing and manufacturing its own modular infrastructure rather than retrofitting traditional data centre facilities – positions it differently from conventional colocation and hyperscale operators. However, it also means Firmus must build and maintain its own manufacturing and engineering capabilities at scale, which is what the Benmax acquisition is designed to address.

With the acquisition, Firmus will have 340 employees globally, spanning engineering, manufacturing, project delivery and supply chain functions. Polsen’s appointment as Chief Development Officer is intended to extend the leadership team from engineering and manufacturing into project delivery as the company’s construction pipeline grows across multiple sites and geographies simultaneously.

The acquisition is subject to completion of the binding agreement. Financial advisers for the transaction were not disclosed in the announcement.

Last Updated on August 13, 2026 by Nick Ross