By Julia Fioretti, Richard Henderson and Sangmi Cha | Updated on Oct 08, 2026 at 07:43 AM
Australian data center company Firmus Grid Ltd. closed the books on its initial public offering as investors grew increasingly concerned that the struggling deal could be pulled, according to people familiar with the matter.
The bookbuilding closed as scheduled Thursday morning in Australia amid mounting concern that the company failed to attract adequate support for the A$11 marketed share price, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. At the time of closing, there was no clear indication of the price or the deal structure, they said. A representative for Firmus didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Nvidia Corp.-backed firm was looking to raise as much as $5.5 billion in one of Australia’s largest-ever IPOs, at an implied market value of A$43.7 billion ($30.4 billion). While early indications suggested healthy demand, concerns later emerged on the valuation. As the deal progressed, some potential investors turned more cautious as they worry about existing shareholders potentially flooding the market soon after the company’s debut, people familiar with the matter have said. The overhang added to trepidations over what some investors see as an aggressive pricing strategy, they said.
“I’ve never seen an IPO so polarizing,” Jun Bei Liu, co-founder and lead portfolio manager at Ten Cap Investment, said on Bloomberg TV. “There was a lot of international investor interest, however, when it comes to the crunch, the demand seems like it isn’t there when they were asked to put up the capital that’s required.”
Firmus’s targeted pricing ran up against jittery sentiment over the pace of borrowing and spending for the global artificial intelligence buildout — particularly for a company banking mostly on its vision, rather than its track record. Some also saw it as a sign of investors becoming more selective after a massive wave of AI fundraising, with other large deals in the pipeline like the mega listing of Claude chatbot maker Anthropic PBC.
In a recent sign of growing market skepticism, health and fitness ring maker Oura Inc. last month delayed a US IPO that could have raised as much as $2.2 billion. Nuclear power services firm Holtec Nuclear Corp. and CVC Capital Partners-backed Bamboo Insurance Services Inc. have also postponed their IPOs in recent days, citing market conditions.
Read More: Derailed IPO Plans Rattle US Market Ahead of Anthropic Debut
“There is a broader concern in the market that higher interest rates could negatively affect the AI-infrastructure build-out and the ability of companies such as Firmus to achieve strong returns on their investments in coming years,” said Rolf Bulk, head of semiconductors and infrastructure at The Futurum Group.
| Read More |
|---|
|
Shares of Firmus backer Maas Group Holdings Ltd. fell as much as 30% in Sydney, the most on record. Maas Group noted that there has been “significant market speculation and commentary” on whether the proposed IPO will be proceeding. The company is not aware of any undisclosed information that would explain the recent trading, it added.
The listing was on track to be one of the largest-ever in Australia, on par with Medibank Pvt’s offering in 2014, which raised just a hair under $5 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That would be a welcome boost to the country’s primary market, where proceeds this year are just over $1 billion, after surpassing $2 billion in each of the previous two years.
Listen and follow The Bloomberg Australia Podcast on Apple , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Firmus began as a Bitcoin mining operation in Australia in 2019 and has benefited from surging demand for AI infrastructure across Asia, with a pipeline of data center projects in Australia and Singapore.
The company has inked a number of large deals with high-profile clients as it seeks to capitalize on artificial intelligence demand. It secured $2 billion in commitments from investors including Nvidia and Blackstone Group. Other existing shareholders include Jane Street, while Firmus also raised $505 million in a Coatue Management LLC-led funding round in April.
Proceeds from the listing would fund purchases of graphics processing units for its first data center project in Batam, Indonesia, being developed with DayOne Data Centers Ltd., as part of an eight-year partnership with Nvidia.
Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Morgans Financial Ltd. are acting as joint lead managers on the listing.