New Zealand investment company Powerhouse Ventures is investing in Tasmanian data center firm Firmus.
Powerhouse said late last month it is investing AU$150,000 (US$107,000) in Firmus. At the same time, it is investing AU$435,000 (US$312,000) in Course Management Software provider CourseLoop.
Founded in 2019, Firmus offers colocation and cloud services, as well as cloud-based HPC services through its Supercloud brand.
The company currently operates a 20MW data center in Launceston, Tasmania. known as LST01 that has potential up to 40MW. The site offers up to 100kw per rack utilizing immersion liquid cooling, reportedly operates at a PUE of 1.03, and is powered by renewable energy.
The island of Tasmania runs on entirely renewable energy. Firmus says spare immersion rack space at its facility houses modified cryptocurrency mining machines to act as the power load to be varied as required by the grid operator; if power demand is high, the machines will reduce their power usage to prevent overload. This is done through. Firmus ‘ proprietary control system, known as Demand Response And Dynamic Inference System (DRADIS) to coordinate its machine.
With the investment, Powerhouse said Firmus will be developing a new 20MW data center hall known as LST02 at its Launceston campus. The new facility has a target completion date of mid-2022. The new hall will reportedly have capacity to host more than 100 petaflops of double-precision AI workloads. The company reportedly has potential capacity for up to 200MW in Tasmania.
“PVL views the investments in CourseLoop and Firmus as compelling from both a financial and strategic perspective, bolstering PVL’s network amongst the university community and our technical know-how in the commercialization of distributed energy resources,” said Joshua Baker, non-executive director at Powerhouse Ventures.
Powerhouse is an investment company aiming to invest in primarily Australian IP in the areas of engineering & clean tech, digital technology, healthcare, agritech, and environmental sectors. Its other investments include Australian space services company, SkyKraft; building modeling firm Modlar; and lab-on-a-chip company CertusBio.
