Nvidia Partner SMC Raising $950M to Tap AI Server Boom

(Bloomberg) -- Singapore data center upstart Sustainable Metal Cloud is raising about $950 million in fresh funds, seeking to tap the global artificial intelligence boom to spur its growth.

The company, an affiliate of Australia’s Firmus Technologies, is finalizing an initial equity round of about $400 million, people familiar with the matter said. The six-year-old firm is also in the process of raising $550 million in debt, the people said, asking not to be identified as the plans are private.

SMC is among data center companies targeting Asia as global tech conglomerates and AI startups seek computing capacity for their services. It offers companies use of advanced Nvidia Corp. chips, crucial for developing and running AI applications.

Deliberations are ongoing and details such as the size of the fundraising could change, the people said. The money received will go toward funding the company’s data center expansion beyond Singapore, they said. An SMC representative declined to comment.

The company says it has more than 1,200 of Nvidia’s high-end H100 AI chips operational in Singapore currently, and aims to increase that to 5,000 by the end of the year. Demand for that model is so great that some customers are having to wait as long as six months to receive it.

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For companies racing to train large language models to perform new tasks, the performance edge of the H100 — which Nvidia says are four times faster than its predecessor — can be critical. Many of Nvidia’s chips are seen as so key to developing AI that the US government has restricted their sale to China.

SMC, also backed by Singapore’s ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, is developing cooling technology it says can cut data centers’ energy consumption by nearly 50%. Its method involves submerging the data center’s computers in liquid to draw heat away faster.

The Asia-Pacific region will be the fastest-growing market for data centers over the next five years, Moody’s Ratings said in a report this week. Companies are set to invest about $564 billion in the region’s data centers through 2028, as their capacity is projected to grow at a compound annual average rate of almost 20% over that span, it said.