{"id":160764,"date":"2025-09-22T09:58:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T09:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/160764\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T09:58:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T09:58:32","slug":"roxy-jacenkos-husband-makes-major-comeback-after-going-to-jail-and-has-turned-250k-investment-into-1-9billion-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/160764\/","title":{"rendered":"Roxy Jacenko’s husband makes major comeback after going to jail and has turned $250k investment into $1.9billion company"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roxy Jacenko<\/a>‘s husband Oliver Curtis has staged a dramatic comeback after serving jail time, winning backing from US technology giant Nvidia for his AI-driven data company ahead of its planned public listing.<\/p>\n

Curtis, 40, co-founded Firmus with Tim Rosenfield in 2019, starting with just a $250,000 investment.<\/p>\n

Now, Nvidia and local investment house Ellerston Capital have backed a $330million funding round, valuing the Singapore-based business at $1.9billion.<\/p>\n

Firmus is now counted among a handful of private Australian companies valued above $1billion, including Canva, Rokt and Airwallex.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Originally launched as a bitcoin<\/a> mining venture, Firmus pivoted into AI-focused data centres.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company has built a software platform that manages every aspect of a data centre and claims to have developed cooling technology that uses 60 per cent less energy than competitors.<\/p>\n

With its new capital, Firmus plans to build a massive data centre hub in Tasmania<\/a>, pitched as an ‘AI<\/a>\u00a0factory’ – to power, train and operate next-generation AI systems with its in-house software and cooling technology.<\/p>\n

The development is said to attract up to $2.1billion in its first stage and create up to 100 direct jobs.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Roxy Jacenko’s husband Oliver Curtis has secured the largest equity capital raising deal for his AI-led company, Firmus, in Australia this year<\/p>\n

\"Oliver <\/p>\n

Oliver Curtis is pictured leaving Cooma Correctoinal Centre in June, 2017.<\/p>\n

‘AI Factories are purpose-built to power, train and inference artificial intelligences,’ Mr Curtis told The Mercury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

‘With Tasmania’s clean energy and our AI Factory platform, we believe this will be the most cost-effective, sustainable AI facility in the world,’ Mr Curtis said.<\/p>\n

‘Project Southgate will form the foundation of Australia’s artificial intelligence infrastructure and secure our place as the Asia-Pacific region’s AI hub.’<\/p>\n

AI tools like ChatGPT run on tokens that are currently heavy on energy and emissions.<\/p>\n

‘Producing these AI tokens in Tasmania will create a new type of green AI token \u2013 clean and powered by renewables \u2013 enabling AI to scale sustainably,’ Mr Rosenfield said.<\/p>\n

It marks a remarkable turnaround for Curtis, who was jailed for insider trading in 2016.<\/p>\n

He was sentenced to two years in prison after conspiring with then-best friend John Hartman to make nearly $1.5 million through illegal trades.<\/p>\n

Speaking about his time in prison Curtis told the Daily Telegraph: ‘It was tough, but you come out a stronger person. It was something that I could not prepare for, something you cannot plan for.<\/p>\n

‘That is something that I would not wish on anybody. It was an experience, one that I have put behind me.’<\/p>\n

The conviction saw him banned from managing corporations for several years, effectively ending his early finance career.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The $330million investment from US technology giant Nvidia, catapulted Firmus to unicorn status (pictured Firmus co-chief executives Oliver Curtis and Tim Rosenfield)<\/p>\n

Just a week after Curtis’ sentencing, Jacenko, then 37, was diagnosed with breast cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She told their children Pixie and Hunter their father was ‘doing business in China’ while he was behind bars.<\/p>\n

When he was released in 2017 after serving one year of his sentence, seeing his family again was a defining moment.<\/p>\n

‘I hugged the kids and gave Roxy a kiss and a cuddle and for us then everything was behind us. They are definitely my number-one priority and will always be my number-one priority. Family is the most important thing in my life and the kids and Rox mean the world to me.’<\/p>\n

Curtis father is Nick Curtis, a well-known Sydney mining entrepreneur.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roxy Jacenko‘s husband Oliver Curtis has staged a dramatic comeback after serving jail time, winning backing from US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,100,44,106615,942,2801],"class_list":["post-160764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-dailymail","tag-news","tag-roxy-jacenko","tag-singapore","tag-tasmania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}