Firmus kicks off a A$7 billion IPO: OpenAI anchors Australia’s biggest float since Telstra

Firmus Technologies began pitching investors on Monday for an initial public offering that could raise as much as A$7 billion, about US$5 billion, on the Australian Securities Exchange, with a listing targeted for the end of October, Bloomberg reported. At that size it would be the largest Australian float since Telstra’s privatisation in 1997, and the first Asia-Pacific AI-factory operator to list with OpenAI as an anchor tenant.

That is the part that separates this listing from the data-center floats that came before it. Firmus is not selling racks of empty space. It is selling more than 900 megawatts of contracted capacity, an anchor contract with OpenAI at two sites in Malaysia, a 170,000-accelerator campus in Indonesia built with Nvidia, and a cap table that already includes Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone and Jane Street. Two of its seven AI factories are running. The other five, and most of the revenue, are still under construction.

The roadshow also opens in a week when the customers Firmus depends on are telling the world to slow down. OpenAI’s chief executive said on Saturday the industry should pace the frontier and that his own company will not list this year. The company his firm anchors in Malaysia is going public in six weeks.

Article Brief

Key Takeaways

5 Points30s Read

1. 01The deal–Firmus is seeking up to A$7 billion (about US$5 billion) in an ASX IPO targeted for the end of October, Bloomberg reported, after the Australian Financial Review first reported the target. Investor meetings began in Asia this month.
2. 02The record–A A$7 billion raise would top Medibank’s A$5.68 billion offering in 2014, which was called Australia’s biggest IPO since Telstra’s 1997 sale.
3. 03The customers–Firmus passed 900 MW of contracted capacity on Sept. 8 and named OpenAI as anchor customer at two Malaysian sites; a 360 MW Batam campus with 170,000 Nvidia accelerators is expected to bring US$25–30 billion of offtake over six years.
4. 04The money–More than US$3 billion of equity in a year (Coatue, Nvidia, Blackstone, Jane Street), a US$10 billion Blackstone-led debt facility, and a post-money valuation above US$10.5 billion in August, up from A$1.85 billion a year earlier.
5. 05The risk–Only two of seven AI factories are operating. The IPO is priced on delivery: five sites in 24 months, Vera Rubin on time, and customers whose own chief executive said on Saturday the industry should pace itself.

Firmus IPO: a A$7 billion raise, an end-October listing and the biggest float since Telstra

Firmus is seeking to raise as much as US$5 billion, about A$7 billion, and is targeting a listing at the end of October, with the size and timing still subject to change, Bloomberg reported on Monday, after the Australian Financial Review first reported the target. Investor meetings started in Asia in the middle of the month, with Australian roadshows to follow, and no pricing, listing date or free float has been announced, according to The Next Web.

The scale is unusual for Sydney. Medibank Private’s A$5.68 billion offering in 2014 was described at the time as Australia’s biggest IPO since Telstra’s 1997 sale, Bloomberg reported then. A A$7 billion Firmus deal would pass it. It would also be a very different kind of company for the exchange: Australian-founded, Singapore-headquartered, and building most of its capacity outside Australia.

The number to hold onto is the one that changed fastest. Firmus raised A$330 million in September of last year at a post-money valuation of A$1.85 billion, with Ellerston Capital as cornerstone and Nvidia participating, according to the company. In April it raised US$505 million led by Coatue at a US$5.5 billion valuation, and in February it closed a US$10 billion long-dated debt facility led by Blackstone, with Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Morgans lined up for what was then planned as a US$2 billion float, The Next Web reported. In August it raised US$2 billion more at a post-money valuation above US$10.5 billion, bringing equity raised in a year past US$3 billion, with Coatue and Nvidia returning, Blackstone joining and Jane Street participating, Firmus said. The IPO would raise roughly half as much again as the company’s entire August valuation.

900 MW contracted: what OpenAI and Nvidia actually signed

The contract book is what the roadshow will be built around. Firmus said on Sept. 8 that it had passed 900 MW of contracted capacity across its portfolio and that OpenAI had become an anchor customer through a multi-year partnership for dedicated capacity at two AI factory sites in Malaysia, in a release that did not disclose the megawatts or the dollar value of the OpenAI deal. “These new data centers in Malaysia will help us serve growing demand for OpenAI’s products,” Sachin Katti, OpenAI’s vice president of compute strategy, said in the release. Firmus counts seven AI factories across Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia; two are operational and five are targeted for service within 24 months, running Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform on the company’s HyperCube modules, which are prefabricated in regional New South Wales.

The Nvidia relationship is the other pillar, and it is more than a shareholding. In June the two companies announced a 360 MW campus in Batam, Indonesia, with access to 170,000 Nvidia accelerators through 2027 and 2028 and a partnership running through 2034, under which Nvidia supplies its DSX AI factory platform and earns product revenue plus a share of cloud revenue. Firmus said it expected US$25 billion to US$30 billion of offtake agreements over the first six years, with the Singapore-based developer DayOne as its construction partner, according to the announcement.

Put the two together and the shape of the business is clear. Roughly 900 MW is contracted against a small operating base, the biggest single site is not due until early 2027, and the expected revenue is concentrated in a handful of AI-native customers, one of which is now also the most-watched private company in the world. That concentration is what makes the IPO possible and what a prospectus will have to price.

Power first: 600 MW from Gunvor and 1.2 GW of new renewables in South Australia

Firmus’s pitch has always been that it solves the constraint the rest of the industry is stuck on. In June it signed a 12-year agreement with Gunvor Group for 600 MW of firm electricity for campuses at Tailem Bend and Stirling North in South Australia, linked to 1.2 GW of new renewable generation and battery storage by 2032, including 1.5 GWh of new batteries and a 220-hour annual demand-response commitment, the company said. The South Australian campuses are planned at 2.7 GW.

That agreement is the model for the national plan Firmus laid out last October: 1.6 GW of compute across Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth by 2028, backed by up to 5.1 GW of new wind, solar, storage and hydro, at a programme cost of A$73.3 billion, Startup Daily reported. The Tasmanian flagship, Project Southgate at Launceston, was designed for 36,000 Nvidia GB300 chips with a 90 MW first stage due this year.

Firmus’s immersion-cooled design is the reason the numbers scale the way they do: the company claims a 60% reduction in energy use and roughly half the construction cost of an air-cooled build, which is the argument for why 900 MW of contracts can be served from a company that raised its first A$330 million a year ago.

The AI IPO calendar Firmus is jumping ahead of

The float lands in a queue. Anthropic is preparing a Nasdaq listing at a valuation near US$2 trillion after telling investors it expects a second straight quarter of adjusted profit, and OpenAI has pushed any listing of its own into 2027 or later. Firmus would get to market first, in October, which makes it the closest thing public investors will have to the two labs’ capacity bills: an investor who cannot buy OpenAI can buy one of its landlords.

The company is also selling itself as an Australian industrial story. Its HyperCube modules are fabricated in regional New South Wales, it agreed in August to buy Benmax’s fabrication, design and projects businesses to speed up deployments, and alongside the OpenAI announcement it proposed an Australian AI Access Program to give researchers and organisations working in science, education, agriculture and climate resilience time on its machines. Those are the lines a domestic fund manager is meant to read before the risk factors.

What the prospectus has to answer

Four questions decide whether A$7 billion clears in October.

How much of 900 MW is revenue. Contracted capacity is not delivered capacity. With two factories running and Batam not due until the first quarter of 2027, the IPO is being sold on a schedule: five sites in 24 months, Vera Rubin deliveries landing on time, and power connections that South Australia has promised but not yet energised. Any slip moves revenue out of the years the valuation is built on.

Who the counterparties are. OpenAI is an anchor tenant that has not published its own financials and said on Saturday that it will not go public this year, Reuters reported. Nvidia is supplier, shareholder and revenue-sharing partner at once. A Firmus prospectus will be the first public document to show what those relationships look like in dollars, and TECHi’s Nvidia quote page is where the other side of that trade shows up.

Whether the market still wants AI capacity this month. The roadshow opened on the day Asian AI-linked stocks slid after the frontier labs’ call to pace development, with SoftBank falling as much as 13% in Tokyo. TECHi’s reading of that pledge is that it has no enforcer, and Firmus is a live test: OpenAI anchoring a new campus while its chief executive argues for restraint is either a contradiction or a definition of what “pacing” means in practice, which is slower models and the same power bill.

Whether the capital stack holds. More than US$3 billion of equity, US$10 billion of Blackstone debt and a A$7 billion IPO add up to well under half of a A$73 billion programme. The rest is meant to come from the offtake, which is the same logic behind Anthropic’s US$13.7 billion GPU deal and every other compute contract signed this year: the customer’s growth funds the builder’s balance sheet. That works as long as the customer keeps growing.

Firmus has not commented publicly on the IPO reports. Its co-founder and co-chief executive Tim Rosenfield described the OpenAI deal as “the moment Asia-Pacific becomes a producer of intelligence, not just a consumer of it.” The prospectus will show what that costs to produce.