Australian data centre operator Firmus will open its initial public offering on October 6, testing whether public markets still have patience for the AI build-out.
A term sheet sent to investors puts the raise at A$7B ($5B), and a greenshoe could lift it to $5.5B. Institutions bid from October 6 to 7, the prospectus is expected on October 8, retail investors can apply between October 12 and 19, and the shares should begin trading on the ASX on October 22.
That would trail only Telstra’s $10B listing in 1997 as the largest in Australian history, and rank fourth globally this year on Dealogic’s count.
Founded in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee, Firmus runs two data centres in Australia and Singapore with five more under development across Asia-Pacific. Founders are locked in escrow, with just 10% of their stock released after a year and 39.9% after two.
The float also arrives against local friction. Community opposition to data centres is building over power and water consumption, and Firmus has drawn pushback on its planned Australian sites.
Read the prospectus as a bet on contracted demand, not sentiment. Firmus passed 900MW of contracted capacity this month on the back of a compute agreement with OpenAI, which gives underwriters the revenue visibility that pure AI-infrastructure stories have struggled to show.
