Firmus Pulls Its $30 Billion A.I. Stock Listing

Firmus has pulled the plug on its planned Sydney listing after investors refused to back a valuation of about $30 billion, roughly €27 billion. The order books had only just closed. By Australian broadcaster ABC’s account, that would have made it the country’s biggest IPO since Telstra in 1997.

The numbers were always doing a lot of heavy lifting. Firmus reported about $51 million in revenue in fiscal 2026, which put the hoped-for valuation at roughly 600 times sales. The company had already been marked at $5.5 billion in April and more than $10.5 billion in August, but even a cut in the offer price from 11 to 8.25 Australian dollars a share could not get the deal over the line.

Some investors thought the whole thing was simply too expensive from the start. Others pointed to a prospectus they felt did not give enough detail, and to the risk that existing shareholders might dump stock after listing. ABC also said the past of co-founder Oliver Curtis, who was convicted of insider trading in 2016, added to the pressure. Australia’s technology index has fallen almost 18 percent this year, which did not exactly help the mood.

Firmus builds data centers for A.I. workloads and counts Meta and OpenAI among its customers. Nvidia owns 7.2 percent of the company and is more than a passive backer: the two are planning a 360-megawatt campus in Indonesia with up to 170,000 Nvidia chips, plus credit support and a share of future cloud revenue. Yet the company has 912 megawatts planned and only 46 built, while its five remaining sites are estimated to cost $37.7 billion.

The timing is awkward. A recent report showing OpenAI’s revenue falling short of expectations helped push A.I. stocks lower, and Wall Street is already having a dry spell for IPOs. Firmus is still talking up $72.8 billion in customer revenue commitments, a projected $5.8 billion in operating profit for 2029, and a private funding round of $2 billion to $3 billion before another Nasdaq try next year.