Firmus Plans $2B ASX IPO After $505M Raise and Blackstone Debt
▼ Summary
– Firmus, an Australian AI data centre company, raised $505 million at a $5.5 billion valuation in a final pre-IPO round led by Coatue Management with Nvidia’s participation.
– The company plans a $2 billion IPO on the ASX around June or July 2026, backed by a $10 billion Blackstone-led debt facility secured in February.
– Its core project is a national network of liquid-cooled “AI Factories,” starting with a Tasmania campus, aiming for 1.6 gigawatts of capacity across five sites by 2028.
– Nvidia is both a strategic investor and the exclusive chip supplier, with its investment aligning with Firmus’s rapid deployment of Nvidia’s GB300 systems.
– The company’s emergence highlights Australia’s growing role in AI infrastructure, leveraging renewable energy and political stability to attract major investment.
Australian AI infrastructure developer Firmus Technologies has secured $505 million in new equity funding, marking a critical step toward a landmark public listing. The investment round, led by Coatue Management with continued backing from Nvidia, values the company at $5.5 billion. This capital injection is part of a final private funding push ahead of a planned initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange, which aims to raise an additional $2 billion in June or July. The company’s ambitious expansion is further supported by a massive $10 billion debt facility arranged by Blackstone, positioning Firmus to deploy 1.6 gigawatts of AI computing capacity across Australia by 2028.
This latest funding represents the company’s third major equity round in just six months, bringing the total private capital raised in that period to approximately $1.35 billion. Advisors from Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgans Financial, and Morgan Stanley are currently engaged in a non-deal roadshow to gauge investor interest for the upcoming IPO. If successful at the targeted scale, the listing would rank among the largest technology offerings in Australian history.
The company’s foundational project is a $4.5 billion construction program called Project Southgate, centered on a purpose-built campus in Launceston, Tasmania. This site is engineered to house 36,000 Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell chips within modular, liquid-cooled facilities. The choice of Tasmania is strategic, leveraging the state’s predominantly hydroelectric power grid to provide a low-carbon energy source for immensely power-intensive AI model training. Firmus claims its proprietary liquid-cooling technology reduces energy use by up to 60% and cuts construction costs by half compared to traditional air-cooled data centers, offering a potential economic advantage for large-scale AI operations.
Project Southgate is designed as a national network, with planned expansions in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Perth. The full rollout, developed in partnership with Nvidia and CDC Data Centres, carries a projected total cost of $73.3 billion. To finance this growth, Firmus secured a landmark $10 billion debt facility in February 2026 from funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Blackstone Credit & Insurance. This private credit transaction, one of the largest of its kind in Australia, underscores the strong institutional appetite for financing contracted AI infrastructure assets.
Nvidia’s involvement is multifaceted, acting as both a strategic investor and the exclusive chip supplier for Firmus’s facilities. The chipmaker’s initial investment came during a $330 million raise in late 2025, when Firmus was valued at $1.9 billion. The recent round at a $5.5 billion valuation represents a near-tripling of worth in roughly half a year. This alignment incentivizes rapid construction, directly driving demand for Nvidia’s hardware. Project Southgate utilizes Nvidia’s DSX reference architecture, a standard designed for high-density AI computing environments, further deepening the technological integration between the two companies.
Firmus was co-founded in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield, and Jonathan Levee, with Curtis and Rosenfield serving as co-CEOs. The company’s origins trace back to providing cooling solutions for bitcoin mining operations before its decisive pivot to AI data center infrastructure. Curtis’s personal history adds a distinctive element to the corporate narrative; following a conviction for insider trading in 2016, he re-emerged as an investor and co-founder. His initial $250,000 stake in Firmus is now worth a substantial sum at the current valuation.
The company’s rise exemplifies Australia’s emergence as a significant destination for AI infrastructure investment. The nation’s political stability, renewable energy resources, and proximity to Asia-Pacific markets are attracting major capital commitments. This trend is also visible in deals like NEXTDC’s A$6.4 billion debt raise for an AI campus developed with OpenAI. The Australian government formalized its stance in March 2026 by releasing national expectations for data center and AI infrastructure developers.
Globally, the concentration of AI compute in specific geographies is accelerating, driven by energy availability and regulatory climates. Australia is positioning itself as a beneficiary of this geographic diversification, a dynamic underscored by recent disruptions to data center plans in the Gulf region. The broader compute arms race is reflected in massive global investments, such as Meta’s $27 billion infrastructure deal with Nebius.
The upcoming IPO will test whether public market investors share the conviction of private backers in valuing a pre-revenue developer with contracted assets and a national blueprint. A successful $2 billion raise at the current valuation would make Firmus one of the most valuable tech companies ever listed on the ASX. Beyond the financial metrics, the listing will force a concrete discussion in Australia about the governance, ownership, and regulatory frameworks for sovereign AI infrastructure. With capital committed and construction underway, Tasmania’s renewable grid is poised to power some of the most energy-intensive computing workloads in the southern hemisphere.
(Source: The Next Web)