Firmus and CDC Data Centres have pulled the plug on their partnership for Project Southgate.

As reported by the Australian Financial Review, CDC first hinted that the partnership was dwindling in September, with CEO Greg Boorer stating that the companies were moving apart due to Firmus' large-scale expansion plans in Asia, raising concern about the company's funding and scalability.

Project Southgate is a major 1.6GW buildout project for Aussie neocloud Firmus. The company announced it was working with CDC on the buildout in October 2025, expecting to see up to $47.68bn in investment.

The first phases were under construction in Tasmania and Melbourne, with up to 150MW planned, representing 54,000 Nvidia GB300s, and targeting a delivery date of mid-2026.

However, the two have now stopped working together, having deployed just 42MW of capacity. According to AFR, this is at the CDC data center in Melbourne, which will no longer reach 150MW.

Boorer told publication Rampart this week that: "We’re certainly not planning on doing 1.6GW of rollout with them because they made other choices regarding doing their own data center developments, which is slightly different to what we envisaged."

The company is also looking to build three data center campuses in Tasmania, which Boorer further said was "misaligned" with CDC's own views on Project Southgate and how it should progress.

Firmus co-CEO and co-founder Oliver Curtis added in a statement to w.media: “Firmus and CDC mutually agreed earlier this year not to proceed with the previously proposed Southgate development partnership. The decision does not affect Firmus’s current development plans, contracted customer capacity, disclosed strategy or important international partnerships.”

He added: “We remain focused on delivering AI infrastructure projects across our Asia-Pacific portfolio. CDC is a highly respected participant in the Australian data center sector, and we wish them well in their future developments.”

That Firmus has been pushing ahead with plans for data centers elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region is well acknowledged. The company has signed agreements with Meta and OpenAI to provide capacity to the companies in Indonesia and Malaysia, respectively.

The revelation that the relationship between Firmus and CDC has broken down comes as Firmus prepares to launch a public offering, for which it aims to raise some $5 billion.

DCD has contacted Firmus for comment.