16 SEP 2026 — Firmus runs a data-centre campus on Batam, is building two more in Malaysia for OpenAI, and has begun meeting investors for a float on the Australian Securities Exchange. It is asking for about A$7 billion, roughly US$5 billion, which would be one of the largest listings in Australian history.
The roadshow started in Singapore and moves through Hong Kong, London and New York before a final Australian leg. A listing is expected late in October. No prospectus has been lodged.
What the company actually operates
Firmus describes seven AI factories across Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Two are operating and five are meant to be in service within two years. Contracted capacity was put at more than 900MW earlier this month.
The Indonesian site is a known quantity in the region, a 360MW campus on Batam with 170,000 accelerators, which we covered when its power agreement was signed. In Australia, Project Southgate covers Launceston, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth, with a stated ambition of 1.6GW by 2028 at a program cost of A$73.3 billion. The Tasmanian first stage targets 90MW and 36,000 Nvidia GB300 chips, and the company has asked Hydro Tasmania for 450MW.
South Australia is the larger promise: campuses totalling 2.7GW, supported by a twelve-year, 600MW agreement with Gunvor Group and 1.2GW of new renewable generation and storage by 2032.
The anchor tenant is the business
OpenAI has signed a multi-year deal for dedicated capacity at two Malaysian sites. Sachin Katti, OpenAI's vice-president of compute strategy, said "These new data centers in Malaysia will help us serve growing demand for OpenAI's products." Neither company has published the capacity or the contract value.
Nvidia is both shareholder and supplier, and the relationship runs to 2034 with expected offtake of US$25 billion to US$30 billion over six years. Tim Rosenfield, co-founder and co-chief executive, framed the regional pitch as "the moment Asia-Pacific becomes a producer of intelligence, not just a consumer of it."
The valuation nobody can check
The reported valuations for this float disagree, and by a wide margin. The company was valued above US$10.5 billion after an August raise. Reports around the roadshow have put the float target near US$30 billion, against about US$15.5 billion in July. The ABC, reporting from Australia this week, said the listing could value Firmus at more than $50 billion.
Those figures cannot all be describing the same thing, and some of the spread is probably Australian dollars against American ones. The raise is agreed at about A$7 billion. The valuation is not. It is a number bankers are testing on investors, in a roadshow that has not finished, for a prospectus that does not yet exist.
The funding history is clearer. Firmus raised A$330 million in September 2025, US$505 million led by Coatue in April, and US$2 billion in August, with Nvidia, Blackstone and Jane Street among the names attached. A US$10 billion long-dated debt facility led by Blackstone was arranged in February.
What the region gets, and what it gives
For Southeast Asia the substance is power and land rather than equity. Batam supplies a large block of generation to a single customer. Malaysia gets two sites whose output is contracted to an American company. Singapore supplies the corporate base and the finance. The ABC describes the parent as headquartered in Launceston; trade coverage calls Firmus Singapore-headquartered.
The energy requirements are the part worth weighing. A 450MW request to a hydro system, a 600MW twelve-year contract and a 2.7GW ambition are not marginal additions to the grids involved, and the case for them rests on demand that is largely one tenant deep.
The governance detail investors will price
Firmus is run by two co-chief executives, Tim Rosenfield and Oliver Curtis, who are cousins. Curtis was sentenced in 2016 to two years in jail over an insider trading conspiracy involving about $1.4 million in illegal profits from trading between May 2007 and June 2008. He has spoken publicly about it since, saying last year that "The experience of the past presents an opportunity for the future."
This is a matter of public record, not an allegation, and a prospectus will have to address it. Sam Baker of Shadforth Financial Group put the institutional view plainly: "Broader institutional investors are mainly focused on getting a return."
What to watch
Start with the prospectus. Until it is lodged, the capacity figures, the tenant concentration and the valuation are all company or banker statements rather than disclosures carrying legal weight.
The tenant mix is the next risk. A company whose anchor is OpenAI is exposed to one buyer's capital plans, and OpenAI's statement at the weekend that it will not list this year removes one route by which its own numbers would become public.
The grid approvals matter most. Wesley Vale is still seeking approval, the Hydro Tasmania request is not granted, and the South Australian build depends on generation that does not exist yet. Any one of them could push the 2028 timeline back.
