Modular data centers are easy to copy, delivery capability is not

Let me say something. Firmus has landed OpenAI as an anchor customer, and two AI factories in Malaysia are starting customer acceptance. My first reaction to this news is delivery.

I've been watching Firmus for a while. Its AI Factory is modular and vertically integrated, packaging compute, networking, power, and cooling into a single unit. They say it uses liquid cooling and focuses on saving power, water, and space. I buy the product logic—the bottleneck in data centers is power and heat dissipation. Making the whole thing into a replicable module that customers can assemble like building blocks can compress delivery cycles and operational complexity. NVIDIA is a strategic investor and has joined the DGX Cloud partner program; storage uses WEKA and VAST AI OS. At the configuration level, it looks pretty complete.

But modules are easy to replicate; delivery capability is not.

Look at that line in their announcement: over 900MW is the total contracted capacity across all customers, not the scale of the OpenAI deal alone. Anyone who does products understands this phrasing. Contracted capacity and actually delivered, running available compute are separated by a long road. A module gets shipped to a data center in Malaysia, powered on, connected to cooling, scheduling runs through, and delivered to the customer able to stably produce tokens—if any step slips, the pie drawn earlier gets discounted.

When I was doing AI imaging at United Imaging, this was what I feared most. Selling the equipment is just the beginning. Whether the hospital can connect to PACS, whether reports can be written back, who is responsible for missed diagnoses—that's where a product actually lands. The hurdle Firmus has to clear now is the same. It has been raising a lot this year, one round around the $500 million level and another debt financing in the $1 billion range. Money is enough, but money can't buy the experience a delivery team grinds out at customer sites.

Whether Firmus's setup ultimately succeeds will be clear from the acceptance records of those two factories in Malaysia.