TLDR
AI infrastructure company Firmus has priced its ASX float at A$11 a share, raising A$7.1 billion in Australia's largest listing since Telstra's 1997 privatisation. Two market-cap figures circulate, A$43.7 billion and A$30.6 billion, and at least one Sydney fund manager has declined to participate.
The deal
Firmus Technologies has priced its initial public offering at A$11.00 a share, raising approximately A$7.1 billion, with the offering now ranking as the largest capital raising to take place on the Australian Securities Exchange in the period since Telstra's 1997 privatisation.[1] Trading in Firmus shares, under the ticker code AIF, is scheduled to begin on 23 October 2026.[1]
A valuation gap the market has not yet resolved
Two figures are circulating for Firmus's implied market capitalisation, and they are not close. ASX disclosure materials place the market capitalisation at approximately A$43.7 billion at the A$11 offer price,[2] while a term sheet reviewed by Reuters puts the equity valuation at A$30.6 billion.[1] The A$13.1 billion gap between those two readings has not been publicly reconciled, and it is precisely the kind of arithmetic that tends to concentrate the minds of institutional allocators who watch price-to-asset ratios more closely than prospectus summaries.
Firmus's implied worth tripled over the two months preceding IPO pricing, a trajectory that has drawn scrutiny from at least some professional investors even as the cornerstone book filled.[4]
Who is backing it and what the money builds
About half of the IPO shares are being allocated to existing investors, with Nvidia, Coatue and Blackstone among those rolling a portion of their prior stakes into the listed structure.[3] Jane Street also participates as a cornerstone backer. Coatue led a US$505 million equity round in April 2026, followed by a fully subscribed US$2 billion strategic raise in August 2026 that drew Nvidia, Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Jane Street.[1]
Firmus, founded in 2019, designs and operates utility-scale data-centre campuses it describes as AI factories across the Asia-Pacific region, with its HyperCube platform combining liquid-cooling technology, grid-aware energy management and GPU-based compute orchestration.[1] The build-out requires substantial debt financing: Firmus plans to raise roughly US$30 billion in borrowings to fund the infrastructure programme alongside the IPO equity.[4]
The sceptics' case
Joseph Koh, portfolio manager at Sydney-based Blackwattle Investment Partners, said the firm declined to subscribe to the Firmus IPO, pointing to concerns over the delivery timetable for the planned campuses.[4] Koh's position reflects a straightforward question that any leveraged infrastructure build at this scale invites: whether the revenue timeline for operating campuses can service the debt stack before the cost of carry compounds the problem.
Institutional bookbuilding opened on 6 October, with retail applications running from 12 to 19 October 2026, and once shares begin trading on 23 October, Firmus faces an anticipated five-month review period before any potential inclusion in the ASX 200 and ASX 300 index benchmarks.[1]
KEY TAKEAWAYS
SOURCES & CITATIONS
- Australia's Firmus prices shares to raise A$7.1 billion, term sheet (MarketScreener/Reuters)
- Firmus IPO ASX AIF locks in shares at A$11, Australia's biggest float since Telstra (The Bull)
- Data centre operator Firmus said to plan allocating half of IPO to existing investors (Business Times)
- Firmus IPO divides investors after valuation triples in two months (MarketScreener/German edition)
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
When do Firmus shares start trading on the ASX?
Why do two different market-cap figures exist for Firmus?
What does Firmus actually build?
Why did Blackwattle decline to invest?
Elias Thorne writes about interest rates, the bond market and the Reserve Bank. He is interested in what monetary policy actually does to household budgets, and in the long stretches of economic history that tend to repeat.
