Firmus seeks to raise $5B in IPO on Australian Securities Exchange

Firmus Technologies is planning an initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange that could raise up to US$5 billion, roughly A$7 billion. If successful, the listing would rank among the largest tech IPOs Australia has ever seen.

The Singapore-headquartered AI data center developer has already begun investor meetings across Asia as of mid-September 2026, with Australian roadshows expected to follow. The company’s valuation has ballooned past US$10.5 billion, a number that would have seemed absurd even a year ago when Firmus initially targeted a more modest US$2 billion raise by mid-2026.

From Bitcoin mining roots to Nvidia-backed AI giant

Firmus was founded in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield, and Jonathan Levee. The company’s early technology drew from Bitcoin mining infrastructure, but it has since made a complete transition to AI-focused data center operations.

The company now builds liquid-cooled AI factories using Nvidia’s reference architectures. Nvidia is also a backer, part of an investor roster that includes Blackstone.

In April 2026, Firmus raised US$505 million at a post-money valuation of US$5.5 billion. By August, that valuation had nearly doubled to over US$10.5 billion.

Project Southgate and the Blackstone war chest

The centerpiece of Firmus’s Australian ambitions is Project Southgate, an initiative targeting 1.6 gigawatts of AI compute capacity across the country.

Firmus secured a US$10 billion debt facility led by Blackstone in February 2026. Combined with the planned US$5 billion IPO raise, Firmus would have access to a substantial capital base to fund its infrastructure buildout.

The decision to upsize the IPO from its original US$2 billion target stems from a surge in contracted revenue pipelines. New agreements with Nvidia and expansions into Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia and Malaysia gave the company confidence to aim higher.

The crypto-to-AI pipeline

Firmus’s origin story fits a pattern that has become increasingly common in the tech world. Companies that built expertise in energy-intensive computing for cryptocurrency mining have discovered that those same skills, cooling systems, power management, and large-scale hardware deployment, translate directly to AI infrastructure.

Bitcoin mining margins are highly sensitive to cryptocurrency price volatility and the four-year halving cycle that cuts miner rewards in half. AI compute contracts, by contrast, tend to come with long-term agreements from deep-pocketed hyperscale customers.

Firmus appears to have gone further than most former Bitcoin miners, effectively completing a full business model transformation rather than hedging between both worlds. If the IPO proceeds at the upper end of its range, Firmus would enter the ASX as one of its largest tech constituents, having grown from a US$5.5 billion valuation in April 2026 to over US$10.5 billion by August.

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