Firmus cuts its IPO price after weak demand, as its 1.6GW Southgate plan ends at 42MW

Firmus set out on 1 October to raise A$7.1 billion on the Australian Securities Exchange at A$11 a share, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters. Bloomberg put the implied valuation at about A$43.7 billion. It was set to be the second-largest IPO in Australia's history, behind Telstra in 1997. On 7 October, midway through the bookbuild, the Australian Financial Review reported that the price had been dropped to A$9 because of a lack of demand from local, international and retail investors. The AFR's account cites people briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. Firmus had not commented when DCD reported the cut.

Who Firmus is

Firmus was founded in 2019 in crypto and high-performance computing and has moved into AI infrastructure. In August it secured US$2 billion of commitments from investors including Jane Street, Blackstone and Nvidia. It has agreements to supply capacity to Meta and OpenAI, and says the OpenAI deal took its contracted capacity above 900MW.

The plan that ended

A day earlier, Firmus and CDC Data Centres confirmed that Project Southgate, announced in October 2025 with Nvidia and intended to scale to 1.6GW by 2028, would not proceed. About 42MW was deployed, at a CDC data center in Melbourne. Firmus co-chief executive Oliver Curtis said the two "mutually agreed earlier this year not to proceed" and that the decision does not affect contracted customer capacity.

Why we file it

Infrastructure economics asks who pays for AI capacity, and on what terms. At Firmus the buyers are signed; the equity to build for them met weak demand at the planned price. SB Energy's IPO slowed in September for a similar reason. The cloud and specialized compute sector stays yellow. No company on the map changes color.

What this does not show

The price cut rests on one outlet's anonymous sourcing. Before the bookbuild, Reuters reported indicative orders above the deal size. The bookbuild closes on 9 October and the prospectus is due on 12 October, so final terms could differ. Southgate's 1.6GW was announced capacity, never built.