Australia’s Biggest AI IPO Is About to Land — and It’s a Bet on “AI Factories”
What happened: Australian data centre operator Firmus has priced its shares at A$11.00 each, aiming to raise A$7.1 billion (about US$4.94 billion) in an IPO that would be Australia’s second-largest ever and the fourth-largest global IPO of 2026 so far. Why it matters: it prices the AI infrastructure boom in public for the first time at massive scale — investors are being asked to value an “AI factory” company at a ~US$60 billion enterprise value.
October 3, 2026 — Sydney.
What happened
Firmus, which builds what it calls “AI factories” across Australia and the Asia-Pacific, has priced its IPO at A$11.00 per share, according to a term sheet reviewed by Reuters on Thursday. The deal aims to raise A$7.1 billion (~US$4.94 billion), giving Firmus an equity valuation of $30.6 billion. Once you factor in an estimated $30 billion of debt, the enterprise value lands near $60 billion.
The book-building process began this week and was due to close on Friday, with indicative investor orders reportedly already exceeding the deal size. An over-allotment (“green shoe”) option could raise an additional $500 million. The stock is expected to start trading on the Australian Securities Exchange on October 23.
The details
- Scale: Firmus currently has two operational data centres in Australia and Singapore, with five more under development across Asia-Pacific.
- Context: The company said in August it had raised $2 billion in equity at a post-money valuation above $10.5 billion — meaning the IPO prices it at roughly triple that in a matter of months.
- Rankings: Per Dealogic data cited by Reuters, the IPO would be the fourth-largest globally this year, behind only SpaceX, CXMT Corp, and Cerebras Systems — and the second-largest Australian-listed IPO on record, behind Telstra’s $10 billion share sale in 1997.
Why it matters
This is the public market’s clearest stress test yet of the AI infrastructure thesis. Firmus is not a cloud software company or a chipmaker — it sells shovels: the power, cooling, and buildings that AI training and inference physically live in. A $30.6 billion equity valuation (and ~$60 billion with debt) says investors believe demand for AI compute is nowhere near peaking. For anyone watching the AI buildout, this is the number to beat: if the IPO pops on debut, expect a wave of data-centre listings to follow.
FAQ
What does Firmus actually do? It develops and operates data centres optimized for AI workloads — “AI factories” — currently in Australia and Singapore, with more campuses planned across Asia-Pacific.
Why is this IPO such a big deal? At ~US$5 billion, it would be Australia’s second-largest IPO ever and 2026’s fourth-largest globally — the biggest public-market signal yet that AI infrastructure is being treated as a core asset class.
When does it start trading? October 23 on the Australian Securities Exchange, per the term sheet.
Sources: Reuters.