Date: September 8, 2026
Main source: Firmus
Link: https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-surpasses-900-mw-contracted-capacity-adds-openai-as-anchor-customer-and-expands-into-malaysia
Additional sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nvidia-backed-firmus-signs-deal-with-openai-malaysia-data-centre-capacity-2026-09-08/
Summary
Firmus and OpenAI announced a multi-year strategic partnership under which OpenAI will contract dedicated AI capacity at two Firmus facilities in Malaysia. OpenAI becomes the anchor customer of the company's regional expansion. Firmus said its total contracted capacity now exceeds 900 MW. Its network includes seven AI Factories in Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Why it matters
Compute availability is becoming as important a competitive advantage as the model. The deal also reinforces Asia-Pacific as a key region for diversifying capacity away from the traditional US hubs. For OpenAI, securing infrastructure in multiple regions reduces dependence and creates capacity to serve growing demand for inference and training.
Practical implications
- Design AI systems to tolerate changes in region, provider and capacity without rebuilding the whole application.
- For large workloads, inference cost, latency and compute location should be part of the design from the start.
- Service providers should expect more regional offers of infrastructure optimized specifically for AI.