If reported estimates hold, Australia hasn’t had a float of this potential scale since Medibank.
Firmus Technologies, the AI data centre developer behind Project Southgate in Tasmania, is planning to list on the ASX around the end of October.
Reports put the raise at up to US$5 billion, or roughly A$7 billion. At that size it would be the second-largest IPO in Australian history, behind only Telstra’s $14 billion privatisation in 1997, and larger than Medibank’s A$5.68 billion offer in 2014.
It’s also rare for a large AI infrastructure player to list here. Back in 2021 another Australian-founded data infrastructure company IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) chose Wall Street over Martin Place.
Right now details are in short supply as the Prospectus is expected to only be lodged on 8th October. So no ticker, no final price just yet. Almost everything circulating about this deal is assumed, not from a document you can read.
So let’s take a straight-up look at what’s known, what Firmus actually does, and how to buy in if you decide it’s for you.
What’s confirmed
Firmus itself has said relatively little. A spokesperson declined to comment on the size of the raise or how much of the company might be sold.
Here’s the split.
Announced by Firmus:
| Detail | Status |
|---|---|
| Contracted capacity | Passed 900 MW, announced 8 September 2026 |
| Anchor customer | OpenAI, under a multi-year agreement for dedicated capacity at two AI factory sites in Malaysia |
| Nvidia partnership | A 360 MW campus in Batam, Indonesia, with access to 170,000 Nvidia accelerators across 2027 and 2028, running through 2034 |
| Expansion plan | Seven AI data centres across Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia within 24 months |
| Prospectus | Not lodged (Scheduled for 8th October) |
Reported, but not confirmed:
| Detail | What’s being reported |
|---|---|
| Raise | Up to US$5 billion (about A$7 billion), per Bloomberg and Reuters |
| Timing | Latest reporting has Bookbuilding Oct 6–7; Prospectus Oct 8; Retail Offer Oct 12–19; Listing Oct 22, 2026 |
| Valuation | Reports have ranged widely. The company’s own valuation was reported above US$10.5 billion by August 2026 |
| Ticker | Not announced |
| Backers | Nvidia, Coatue Management, Blackstone (debt) and James Packer |
| Roadshow | Investor meetings under way in Sydney, Melbourne and across Asia |
Size and timing can both still change. They already have.
What Firmus actually does
Firmus builds and operates AI data centres. It sells compute capacity to companies that need somewhere to run AI models.
Think of it less as an AI company and more as a landlord for AI, with an unusually expensive building.
Where it came from
Firmus was founded in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee. It started life as a Bitcoin miner and pivoted to AI infrastructure.
That heritage isn’t incidental. The cooling and power expertise came from mining.
The pitch
Two things are meant to set Firmus apart: proprietary cooling technology, and access to cheap renewable energy.
Both matter because the cost of running AI chips is dominated by power and heat. If you can cool them more efficiently and buy electricity cheaply, your cost per unit of compute falls.
Co-CEO Oliver Curtis has argued that AI compute could become Australia’s next commodity export, comparing the opportunity to iron ore.
The build
Project Southgate is the Australian flagship, starting with a planned facility in Launceston, Tasmania designed to house 36,000 Nvidia accelerator chips.
Curtis has talked about deploying more than $70 billion of capital expenditure in the three years to 2028.
That’s the part to sit with. This is a construction company as much as a technology company, and construction companies are judged on whether things get finished on time.
The customers
OpenAI is the anchor. Nvidia is both a supplier and an investor, providing its DSX AI factory platform in return for product revenue and a share of cloud revenue.
Firmus has said it expects US$25 billion to US$30 billion of offtake agreements over its first six years.
What it’s worth
This is where it gets difficult, because Firmus is being valued on what it plans to build rather than what it currently earns.
The private valuation has moved fast:
- September 2025: A$330 million raised at an A$1.85 billion valuation.
- November 2025: Roughly A$500 million raised, valuing it near A$6 billion.
- April 2026: US$505 million led by Coatue, with Nvidia participating at an evaluation of A$8 billion.
- August 2026: Reported above US$10.5 billion.
That’s a valuation up roughly fivefold in under a year, on a business whose largest site isn’t due until early 2027.
There’s also a US$10 billion debt package led by Blackstone sitting behind the build.
You can’t run the usual revenue multiple here the way you can with a listed software company, because the revenue largely hasn’t arrived yet.
How that compares
So the market reaches for a different measure: value per watt of contracted power.
At a reported US$10.5 billion against 900 MW, Firmus prices at roughly US$11 to US$12 per watt.
For comparison, as at May 2026: CoreWeave sat near US$16 per watt, Nebius near US$15, and IREN at roughly US$15 to US$25.
So Firmus is being valued in the same territory as the large US neoclouds, before it has built most of what it has sold.
Its revenue per megawatt is likely to sit lower than theirs, and there’s a structural reason for that. CoreWeave and Nebius sell retail GPU capacity, largely by the hour. Firmus sells wholesale AI factory capacity to a small number of very large customers, and wholesale pricing sits below retail pricing in any industry. This enables Firmus to keep costs lower.
Two caveats worth holding onto. Contracted capacity and operational capacity are different things, and Firmus’s operating base is small next to what it has signed. Secured power isn’t the same as contracted capacity either, which is part of why IREN screens cheaply on this measure.
For a local reference point, PwC Australia puts the cost of commissioning data centre capacity in Australia at roughly $9 million to $14 million per megawatt.
What you’re pricing is execution. Whether the sites get built, on budget, and whether those offtake agreements convert into cash.
The OpenAI and Nvidia question
Firmus’s two most important relationships are also its concentration risk.
OpenAI is the anchor customer. Nvidia supplies the chips, takes a revenue share, and is a shareholder.
The upside is obvious. Anchor demand and guaranteed chip supply are exactly what a new data centre operator needs, and plenty of competitors have neither.
The catch is that a lot rides on two counterparties. If either relationship changed, the contracted pipeline would look different very quickly.
It’s worth reading how those agreements are described when the prospectus lands, particularly the termination terms.
What we don’t know
No prospectus has been lodged. Until one is, the following are all open:
- The ticker. Not announced.
- The price. Not set. Pricing happens at the end of the bookbuild.
- The float size. Reports vary, and Firmus won’t confirm how much of the company is being sold.
- The financials. Audited numbers arrive with the prospectus.
- The listing date. Late October is the target, not a commitment.
What could go wrong
Every reason to be interested in this listing has a matching risk.
The revenue isn’t there yet. Around 900 MW is contracted, but the biggest site isn’t due until early 2027. You’d be buying a build plan.
The capex is enormous. Talk of more than $70 billion of spending to 2028, against a US$10 billion debt facility. Heavy debt loads on AI infrastructure have already unsettled investors in comparable listed names.
Two customers carry a lot of weight. OpenAI and Nvidia are in the pipeline.
Early investors may be free to sell on day one. Correspondence to prospective shareholders reported earlier this year indicated no escrow period for pre-IPO holders. If that carries through to the final structure, it means holders sitting on large paper gains could sell into the debut. Check the escrow terms in the prospectus, because this one directly affects the price you might pay on day one.
Listing days are unpredictable. Offers this size can trade well above or well below their price in the first sessions.
There are community concerns. Firmus’s expansion has drawn local opposition, including in Tasmania.
And the governance history is unusual. Which is worth a section of its own.
Who runs Firmus
Firmus has two co-CEOs, Tim Rosenfield and Oliver Curtis, who are cousins. Ted Pretty chairs the board.
Tim Rosenfield
Rosenfield co-founded the business and has been co-CEO since 2020. He’s based in Singapore and also co-leads Sustainable Metal Cloud, the AI cloud arm that runs Firmus’s HyperCube immersion cooling platform.
He’s the company’s technical and policy voice externally, speaking at events including Nvidia’s GTC, and he contributed to the Tony Blair Institute’s work on managing AI energy demand. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne.
Ted Pretty
The chairman brings the most conventional listed-company experience. Pretty is a lawyer and former group managing director of technology and innovation at Telstra, and a former chief executive of Hills Ltd. He has chaired the group since 2023.
Oliver Curtis
Curtis’s background is a matter of public record and is likely to be addressed in the prospectus, so it’s worth understanding before you read the coverage.
The conviction
In 2016 Curtis was sentenced to two years’ jail for conspiring to commit insider trading. The conduct occurred between May 2007 and June 2008, when he worked as a stockbroker, and the trial heard he shared in $1.4 million of illegal profits. He served approximately 12 months.
He founded the business that became Firmus after his release.
Asked in October 2025 whether Tasmanians could trust the company, Curtis said the experience of the past presented an opportunity for the future, and that the story was about the company rather than any individual.
Why it matters for the listing
The ASX applied a “good fame and character” test to people involved in listing entities, and updated its guidance on that framework in February 2026. Commentary at the time linked the timing to Firmus’s anticipated listing.
Australian law doesn’t automatically bar someone from serving as a director once a sentence is served. But the ASX can impose conditions, including requiring full disclosure in the prospectus.
What this means for you as an investor: it’s a factor to weigh rather than a verdict, and the prospectus is where you’ll find how the ASX and the company have dealt with it. Some institutional investors with governance mandates may weigh it differently to retail investors. That divergence can affect demand, and demand affects price.
Is the Firmus IPO right for you?
There’s no universal answer.
A sensible way to think about any single-company IPO is as a smaller, higher-risk part of a broader portfolio rather than the foundation of your plan. Your portfolio might already include diversified shares, ETFs and cash. A position like this would sit alongside those, not replace them.
There’s no magic percentage. The right amount depends on your financial situation, goals, time frame and comfort with risk.
It’s also worth being honest about what a pre-revenue infrastructure build is. The returns, if they come, depend on things being constructed and contracts converting over several years.
ASIC has warned that social media and other online sources can create unrealistic expectations about returns and volatility. That’s worth remembering with a float this heavily covered.
You don’t need to make a decision because something is trending.
And you don’t need to buy at all.
The bottom line
Firmus has real customers, real chips and a genuinely differentiated position in Australian AI infrastructure. It also wants investors to fund a build that mostly hasn’t happened yet, at a valuation that has moved fivefold in a year.
Both things are true at once.
If you’re interested because it’s the biggest float since Telstra and you assume size means safety, it’s worth slowing down. Telstra was a profitable monopoly. This is a construction programme.
If you’re interested because you understand what you’re funding and want a small position in AI infrastructure, that’s a different conversation.
Either way, wait for the prospectus.
How to buy Firmus shares in Australia
There are typically two ways to invest in an ASX float, and they’re not the same thing.
Option 1: The IPO itself
Participating in the IPO offer involves applying for an allocation through participating brokers, though allocations are subject to availability and not guaranteed. Retail allocations in large floats are usually limited, and you apply before the listing date.
Option 2: On market, after it lists
If you don’t get an allocation, you buy like any other ASX share once trading begins. Here’s how that works on Superhero.
Step 1: Log in and get verified
Log into your Superhero account, or set one up if you’re new. Get your profile verified ahead of the listing date, because verification isn’t instant for everyone.
Step 2: Fund your account
You’re buying an ASX-listed share in Australian dollars, so there’s no currency conversion to think about. You can fund your Superhero account using PayID.
Step 3: Find it
Head to the Invest tab and search by company name, or by ASX code once Firmus’s ticker is published in the prospectus.
Step 4: Choose your order type
A market order fills at the best available price. On a listing day that price can move between the moment you place the order and the moment it fills.
A limit order sets the most you’re willing to pay. It only fills at that price or better, which also means it might not fill at all.
Debut sessions are volatile, and the opening trade can print well away from the offer price. In either direction.
Step 5: Know the hours
The ASX trades from 10am to 4pm Sydney time on business days.
Listings don’t all start at 10am sharp. The ASX opens in a staggered auction across the first few minutes of the session, grouped by the first letter of the ticker code.
Frequently asked questions
How do I buy Firmus shares in Australia?
Either through the IPO offer, if you can get an allocation through a participating broker, or on market once the shares list on the ASX.
You can’t buy before the listing completes.
When is the Firmus IPO?
No date has been confirmed. Bloomberg reported on 14 September 2026 that Firmus was targeting a listing around the end of October. Timing depends on the prospectus, ASX approval and market conditions. According to a reported IPO term sheet, institutional bidding runs October 6–7, the prospectus lodges October 8, retail applications run October 12–19, and trading debuts on the ASX on October 22, 2026.
What’s the Firmus ticker code?
Not announced. It’s disclosed in the prospectus.
How big is the Firmus IPO?
Reports put the raise at up to US$5 billion, roughly A$7 billion. At that size it would be the second-largest IPO in Australian history behind Telstra’s 1997 privatisation, and the fourth-largest globally in 2026 behind SpaceX, CXMT and Cerebras, according to Dealogic.
Firmus has declined to confirm the figure.
Is Firmus profitable?
Firmus has not published audited financials. Around 900 MW of capacity is contracted, but its largest sites are still under construction, with the flagship not due until early 2027.
The prospectus is where the financial picture will be set out.
Is Firmus the only way to invest in AI infrastructure?
No. Other listed options include Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV), along with ETFs such as the Global X Artificial Intelligence ETF (GXAI) and the Betashares Global Robotics and Artificial Intelligence ETF (ASX:RBTZ).
You can browse these and more in our AI Category on Superhero.
