Firmus, an AI data center operator backed by Nvidia, withdrew its planned stock market listing on October 9, 2026, citing market volatility, Reuters reports. The IPO would have raised about US$5 billion and valued Firmus at US$30.6 billion. The company will now raise money privately instead. Jun Bei Liu, co-founder of Ten Cap, called it "an important reality check for the AI investment boom."
What Firmus announced
Firmus said it would withdraw its application to list on the ASX, the Australian Securities Exchange. Its board decided that "proceeding with the offer was not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders." That is according to Reuters, in a report published by the New Straits Times.
"Firmus will now pursue capital from the private markets and consider alternative public and private market options," the company said. The IPO would have been the second-largest new share sale in Australia's history, Reuters says.
How big the IPO was
The reports give slightly different figures for the deal:
| Figure | Reuters | Daily Tribune |
|---|---|---|
| Target raise | US$5 billion | Up to $5.5 billion |
| Valuation sought | US$30.6 billion | $30 billion |
| Earlier valuation | US$10.5 billion, early August | $10.5 billion, less than three months earlier |
| Planned share price | A$11 | Not stated |
Either way, Firmus asked public investors to pay nearly three times what private investors had paid in August.
The price did not hold. Firmus set it at $11 a week before the withdrawal, Startup Daily reports, in a story republished by Information Age. The team then considered cutting it to $9, and reports mentioned $8.25. The Australian newspaper reported that demand was tested at $5.50, according to Startup Daily.
Why investors pulled back
The reports point to four concerns:
- Early selling. Escrow terms are the rules that stop existing owners selling right after a listing. A Tuesday briefing showed Firmus's terms would let existing investors sell more than half the stock from the first day, Reuters reports. Investors began pulling orders on Wednesday.
- Little revenue so far. Firmus earned $51 million in revenue in its 2026 financial year, the Daily Tribune reports. Its draft prospectus promised US$5 billion in annual earnings within five years, according to Reuters.
- Debt. Analysts at the banks running the deal put Firmus's debt at about US$30 billion, Reuters says. That implies a total business value of US$60 billion.
- Built versus planned. Firmus runs 46 MW of computing capacity today, against a pipeline of 865 MW, according to Startup Daily. The Daily Tribune gives the pipeline as 912 MW.
Joseph Koh, a portfolio manager at Blackwattle Investment Partners, called the valuation "a very big price tag for what would likely be expected to happen in the future," Reuters reports. "I think the market wasn't comfortable taking that leap of faith quite at this stage yet."
The withdrawal came in a tense week for AI stocks. US-listed chipmakers fell 3.4% on Thursday, Reuters notes, after a Financial Times report that OpenAI's annualized revenue was US$20 billion lower than earlier signaled. Liu added a caution to the "reality check" comment: "I wouldn't interpret it as the beginning of the end of the AI trade."
Who Firmus is
Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee founded Firmus in 2019 as a Bitcoin mining business, Startup Daily reports. It moved into AI data centers in 2024 and counts OpenAI and Meta as clients. Its backers include Nvidia, Coatue Management, Blackstone and Jane Street, according to Reuters.
Firmus operates two leased data centers, in Melbourne and Singapore, and plans five more across Asia-Pacific, Reuters says. Startup Daily puts the cost of its five-site plan at about US$51 billion. The Daily Tribune says Firmus also needs other financing, including for a planned data center in Batam, Indonesia, with DayOne Data Centers. DayOne has filed for its own Nasdaq IPO.
A deadline adds pressure. A listing delayed past November 30 would trigger dilution that favors earlier investors such as Nvidia, Blackstone and Coatue, partly at the founders' expense. The Australian Financial Review reported this, as cited by Startup Daily.
What this means for developers
Most teams will never buy from Firmus directly. But many rent GPUs from newer AI cloud providers that, like Firmus, sell capacity before it is built. Three lessons apply:
- Ask what is running, not what is planned. Firmus has 46 MW live against a pipeline of 865 to 912 MW. Before you sign, ask a provider how much of your capacity exists today, and put delivery dates and penalties in the contract.
- Treat funding risk as delivery risk. Startup Daily says about US$4.4 billion of the IPO money was meant for servers and deployment in Tasmania and Southeast Asia. Money that now arrives later, or on harder terms, can slow a build-out. Keep a second provider tested and ready.
- Watch the next listings. GPU cloud Lambda is raising up to $4 billion ahead of a 2027 IPO, and DayOne is heading to Nasdaq. How investors price them will show whether money for new data centers keeps flowing at this pace.
Next, watch for the size and price of Firmus's private round, and for any news before the November 30 deadline.
This article was first published on Tech AI Wire.
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Related on Tech AI Wire
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Sources
- Nvidia-backed Firmus scraps US$5bil Australian IPO on poor demand - New Straits Times
- Australian data centre company Firmus scraps ASX float - Information Age
- Nvidia-backed Firmus scraps $5.5-B IPO - Daily Tribune
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