Nvidia-backed Firmus pulls its $30 billion IPO after demand collapses
The biggest AI-infrastructure listing of the year didn't get delayed — it got pulled entirely, after two price cuts in two days found no takers.
Nvidia-backed data-center operator Firmus withdrew its Australian IPO on Friday, abandoning what would have been the country's second-largest listing ever after slashing the offer price twice in 48 hours. The company had been marketing shares at A$11 each to raise about $5 billion at a valuation near $30 billion — roughly three times the $10.5 billion mark it carried just weeks ago, when Nvidia, Coatue and Blackstone put $2 billion into it. On Wednesday bankers cut the price to A$9 and shrank the raise; on Thursday they cut again to A$5.50; by Friday the offer was dead. Australia's big super funds, the natural buyers for a deal this size, refused to bite, and Firmus said proceeding "was not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders," sending it back to private markets instead.
The whole saga ran about five days from bookbuild hype to withdrawal, but the collapse itself was brutal and fast — the two cuts and the pullback all landed inside roughly 48 hours, after the company had publicly touted strong subscription interest. The pricing was always the problem: at the original offer, Firmus was valued at around 600 times its fiscal 2026 sales, with roughly $30 billion of debt propping up an enterprise value near $60 billion, according to analysts cited in the Japanese press. One fund manager's verdict to the Guardian was blunt: "If it got on to the ASX it was going to end in tears."
Why it matters: Firmus never traded, so there's no stock crash to point at — but this is the first hard market judgment on whether public investors will fund AI data-center buildouts at the valuations private investors have been paying. A valuation that tripled in seven weeks now has a public-market price ceiling, and the timing is awkward: a wave of AI-infrastructure listings is lining up behind it for a template. Investors have already balked at one mega-listing this quarter — SoftBank's SB Energy delays a $50B IPO as investors balk — but at least that one was postponed rather than abandoned. The $5 billion that didn't show up has to come from somewhere, and private markets — where Nvidia and friends are comfortable writing checks — is the obvious stopgap.
What to watch: whether Firmus actually raises privately at anything close to the failed IPO valuation, and whether the next AI-infrastructure prospectus opens at a lower number.
Is the public-market funding window for AI data centers closed for this cycle — or was Firmus just mispriced? Tell us in the comments.
