Nvidia-backed Firmus targets $5.5 billion IPO at $30.6 billion valuation, plans to allocate half to early investors

Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus is preparing to raise up to $5.5 billion in one of the country’s largest-ever IPOs, with investor demand already exceeding the number of shares on offer and the company’s valuation nearing $30.6 billion.

Sydney-based Firmus plans to allocate roughly half of the offering, including the over-allotment option, to selected existing strategic and financial investors, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Firmus has previously disclosed Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone and Jane Street among its investors.

“Firmus Grid Ltd. plans to allocate about half of the shares in its initial public offering to existing shareholders, putting Nvidia Corp and Blackstone Group in a position to increase their stakes,” Bloomberg first reported on Monday.

The planned share sale would rank as the second-largest Australian-listed IPO on record, behind Telstra’s $10 billion offering in 1997.

The company has set the IPO price at A$11 per share, or about $7.65, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters. That would value Firmus at about $30.6 billion.

Investor interest has reportedly come in well above the offering size. Banks running the deal now expect to close the institutional bookbuild on Thursday, one day earlier than originally planned. Trading on the Australian Securities Exchange is expected to begin October 23.

Bloomberg reported earlier Monday that Firmus plans to allocate roughly half of the IPO shares to existing shareholders, potentially giving Nvidia and Blackstone an opportunity to increase their stakes.

Firmus declined to comment on the allocation plans.

The company is expected to lodge its prospectus on October 12. Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Morgans are leading the offering.

Firmus goes from $10.5 billion to $30.6 billion in two months

The scale of the IPO is striking on its own, but the speed of Firmus’ valuation jump stands out even more.

Firmus was valued at roughly $10.5 billion after raising $2 billion in strategic equity in August. Nvidia and Coatue made follow-on investments in that round, with Blackstone and Jane Street participating.

At the proposed IPO price, Firmus would be worth nearly three times that valuation just two months later.

That jump reflects intense investor appetite for AI infrastructure, where demand for compute, data centers, energy systems, and specialized cooling has made physical infrastructure one of the most closely watched parts of the AI market.

Firmus sits directly inside that buildout. The company develops and operates modular AI factories using its own energy and cooling technology, pairing data center infrastructure with cloud services aimed at large-scale AI workloads.

The company currently operates data centers in Melbourne and Singapore and has been pushing deeper into Asia-Pacific as demand for AI computing capacity rises.

The August equity round came only months after Firmus secured a Blackstone-led $10 billion financing package tied to its Australian AI infrastructure plans.

TechStartups covered Firmus at the time of that $2 billion raise, when the Nvidia-backed company outlined plans to build AI factories across the Asia-Pacific region.

Now Firmus is attempting something far larger: turning that private-market momentum into one of the biggest public listings Australia has ever seen.

If the IPO lands near the top of its proposed range, the deal would place Firmus among the most highly valued publicly traded AI infrastructure companies to emerge from the current data center investment cycle.

Firmus Founders (Credit:AFR.com)