The planned Australian Securities Exchange float of Oliver Curtis’s artificial intelligence infrastructure company, Firmus Technologies, is at risk of being delayed or abandoned after its expected valuation fell by billions of dollars.
Advisers have suggested the Sydney-based business could be valued at about $30 billion, rather than the $43 billion initially targeted, with its proposed share price potentially reduced from roughly $11 to $8.75.
Sources said the repricing could affect the planned October 23 listing. Nvidia, which supplies Firmus with computer chips, has reportedly been asked to provide additional financial support.
Firmus was founded by Curtis and his cousin Tom Rosenfield in 2019. The company has secured agreements with OpenAI, Nvidia and Meta and provides data centres containing the powerful chips needed to train AI models and run services such as ChatGPT.
At its original valuation, the float was expected to be the second-largest in Australian history. Firmus was valued at $6.9 billion only six months ago.
The company plans to build a network of AI supercomputing data centres across the Asia-Pacific region, equipped with hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips. It intends to sell computing capacity to customers including OpenAI and Meta.
Firmus has already deployed smaller AI computing facilities, but has yet to demonstrate that it can build and operate a hyperscale data centre on the scale required for its multibillion-dollar expansion plans.
Firmus IPO faces criticism over valuation
A New York hedge fund is said to have declined an invitation to participate in the float because of Curtis’s insider trading conviction, despite his having received regulatory clearance.
Morgan Stanley, one of four banks leading the listing, told clients last month that Firmus could be worth between US$65 billion and US$90 billion, equivalent to between $93 billion and $128 billion.
However, Michael Frazis of Frazis Capital Partners dismissed that range as unrealistic, saying: “I don’t think any reasonable valuation will come to anywhere near that.”
Greg Canavan of Canavan Capital Partners described the earlier valuation of more than $43 billion as “absurd”, while fellow analyst Marcus Padley called it “delusional”.
By contrast, Wilson Asset Management portfolio manager Shaun Weick said Firmus shares could trade at a premium to competitors over time because of what he described as its superior business model.
“AI is the most disruptive technological advance in history,” he wrote. “We view it as an arms race driving a once-in-a-generation capex boom, and Firmus is at the centre.”
Weick added: “The world is fundamentally short compute for the foreseeable future. Agentic AI adoption is in the first innings and rapidly accelerating.”
The listing comes against the backdrop of Curtis’s 2016 conviction for conspiring to commit insider trading. He served 12 months of a two-year prison sentence after being found guilty of using confidential information supplied by former school friend John Joseph Hartman.
The court found that Hartman, then an equities dealer, gave Curtis confidential information about Orion Asset Management’s planned trades on 45 occasions between May 2007 and June 2008. Curtis used the information to trade ahead of those transactions.
Curtis, who is married to publicist and socialite Roxy Jacenko, has since described himself as having been “silly” and “stupid” when he committed the offences.
When Firmus shares begin trading, about 42.4 per cent of the company is expected to be allocated to employees, investors and its three founders. Curtis is said to own about 13.3 per cent, while his father Nick owns 5.6 per cent and Rosenfield 5.4 per cent.
The three founders must reportedly retain half of their Firmus shares until a $14 billion investment loan from Blackstone has been repaid.
