At a glance
- Firmus's ASX float values the company at about A$43.7 billion, what Telstra was worth when the Commonwealth floated it in November 1997.
- Firmus began as a bitcoin miner in Launceston, Tasmania, in 2019, and a 2020 email to the then premier pitched the site as designed for AI.
- In eight days from 29 September, Firmus advertised seven roles for a team that switches on finished AI clusters, in Melbourne, Sydney, Batam and Launceston.
- Two more Firmus sites, St Leonards in Launceston and a 360MW campus on Batam in Indonesia, are due to start operating in early 2027.
- Of NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI and Fireworks AI, all Firmus customers, only NVIDIA existed when Telstra floated.
Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus opened its ASX float to bids from large investors on 6 October 2026, at A$11 a share. At that price the company is worth about A$43.7 billion, the Financial Review reported. Telstra, then the government-owned national phone company, was valued at about the same amount when the Commonwealth floated it in November 1997. Raising A$7 billion or more, the Firmus float is set to be the second-largest on the ASX after Telstra's, Reuters reported.
Firmus builds AI factories, data centres designed to train and run AI models on large clusters of specialised chips. Seven years after it began as a bitcoin miner in Launceston, Tasmania, Firmus counts NVIDIA, Meta and OpenAI among its customers and is hiring the engineers who will switch on its next AI clusters.
The Commonwealth floated a third of Telstra in November 1997
The Commonwealth raised about A$14.2 billion from the sale. Institutions paid A$3.40 a share and retail buyers A$3.30, both in two instalments. Once the first was paid, Telstra had more than 1.8 million shareholders, the Australian National Audit Office recorded. At the A$3.40 institutional price, all 12.9 billion Telstra shares were worth about A$43.7 billion. Those are 1997 dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
The chips in Firmus's AI factories come from NVIDIA, which in 1997 was a four-year-old maker of graphics chips and did not list until January 1999. Amazon, whose AWS cloud runs data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, had listed on the Nasdaq six months before Telstra floated, describing itself in its prospectus as "the leading online retailer of books".
Firmus started as a bitcoin miner in Launceston in 2019
Firmus began as a bitcoin miner in 2019, ABC News reported in September. In August 2020 Nick Curtis, a former banker and mining executive whose son Oliver co-founded Firmus, emailed then premier Peter Gutwein that the half-built Launceston facility was designed for growth in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with cryptocurrency mining its "first stage use case". Capital Brief reported the email in May 2026, after it was released to the Tasmanian parliament. Bitcoin mining and AI both run racks of chips that draw heavy power and give off heat, so the power supply and cooling a miner builds can be put to AI work.
By January 2022 the Launceston site was a 20MW data centre with its computers immersed in liquid. Modified crypto mining machines in its spare racks served as a load Firmus could vary as the grid operator required, trade publication DataCenterDynamics reported. Firmus's AI cloud, which rents out computing power, went live in Singapore in 2023 in ST Telemedia's data centres, with NVIDIA chips sitting in Firmus tanks inside 1MW containers called HyperCubes.
IREN, founded in Sydney in 2018, also began as a bitcoin miner and has built an AI cloud business, and London-based AI cloud company Nscale was spun out in May 2024 from Australian bitcoin miner Arkon Energy.
NVIDIA, Meta and OpenAI buy capacity from Firmus
NVIDIA is Firmus's chip supplier, a shareholder and one of its early customers. It signed on in October 2025 as anchor customer for Project Southgate, Firmus's Australian AI factory program, and has committed to take 14MW in Australia and 360MW in Indonesia, according to the Financial Review. Meta runs NVIDIA systems at Firmus's Melbourne AI factory.
OpenAI signed in September for capacity at two Firmus sites in Malaysia, and Fireworks AI, a platform companies use to build and run AI systems on their own data, agreed in August to deploy on Firmus's AI cloud in Asia.
Meta, OpenAI and Fireworks AI were all founded after Telstra floated. Meta began as Facebook in 2004, OpenAI in 2015 and Fireworks AI in 2022.
Investors have put A$4.7 billion into Firmus
Firmus has raised A$4.7 billion of equity from backers including US investor Coatue, NVIDIA, Blackstone, Regal Partners and Wilson Asset Management, according to the Financial Review. The float puts the Firmus valuation at more than 20 times the A$1.9 billion it reached in September 2025.
| Date | Raised | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| September 2025 | A$330 million | A$1.9 billion |
| November 2025 | A$500 million | A$6 billion |
| August 2026 | US$2 billion | Above US$10.5 billion |
| October 2026 float | A$7 billion or more | About A$43.7 billion |
Source: SmartCompany, citing the Financial Review, September 2025; DataCenterDynamics, November 2025; Firmus, August 2026; Australian Financial Review and Reuters, October 2026.
Firmus advertised seven AI cluster commissioning roles in eight days
Between 29 September and 6 October, Firmus posted seven roles with "AI Cluster Commissioning" in the title to its careers board: a storage engineer and a network engineer in Melbourne, an infrastructure automation engineer in Sydney, a project manager, a technical lead and a hardware engineer on Batam, and a hardware engineer in Launceston.
Commissioning is the step that turns installed equipment into a working AI cluster. The project manager will lead "commissioning and operational readiness of large-scale AI cluster deployments", the ad says, from installing compute, network and storage through phased bring-up, validation testing, benchmarking and acceptance testing to handover to operations. The Launceston and Batam hardware engineers will work on the deployment and testing of Firmus's HyperCube systems, and all five engineer ads ask for domestic and international travel for deployment and commissioning. No ad names a site.
The commissioning roles take Firmus's careers board to 67 openings, 35 of them in Australia. On 6 October, the day bidding opened, it also advertised for an assistant company secretary and three senior legal counsel in Sydney.
Customers have signed for 912MW of Firmus capacity and 46MW of it is running, at the two AI factories Firmus operates in Australia and Singapore, according to the Financial Review. Two more are due in early 2027. St Leonards, a 90MW AI factory in Launceston, is expected to start operating early in the year, ABC News reported in June, and a 360MW campus on Batam built with data centre developer DayOne is due to operate from the first quarter.
What to watch
The bids. Banks expect to close bidding from large investors on 8 October, a day early, with interest above the shares on offer and about half the float going to existing investors, Reuters reported on 5 October.
The prospectus. Firmus is scheduled to lodge it on 12 October, Reuters reported. It may name the sites the commissioning team is being hired for.
The debut. Trading on the ASX is due to start on 23 October, with shares priced at A$11.
Hydro Tasmania. The state-owned generator expects an outcome by the end of 2026 on Firmus's request for a long-term 444MW supply agreement for its three Tasmanian sites.