{"id":918689,"date":"2026-10-06T22:40:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/918689\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T22:40:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:40:28","slug":"firmus-australias-great-ai-hope-just-hit-a-speed-bump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/918689\/","title":{"rendered":"Firmus, Australia\u2019s great AI hope, just hit a speed bump"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nick<\/p>\n

October 6, 2026 \u2014 6:15pm<\/p>\n

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AAA<\/p>\n

On one side of a beige building in the Canberra suburb of Hume, there\u2019s the Big River Trade Centre selling building products and timber. On the other, the nation\u2019s capital city bleeds into the bush.<\/p>\n

But inside, there\u2019s a factory making big, white, metal boxes to house and cool the cutting-edge AI chips powering the company touted as Australia\u2019s next artificial intelligence champion: Firmus.<\/p>\n

\"FirmusFirmus founders Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee.Caroline Chia<\/p>\n

If the seven-year-old company\u2019s listing on the ASX this month goes to plan, Firmus will be worth about $44 billion, just a fraction less than Woolworths.<\/p>\n

To get there, Firmus is relying on the white boxes it calls \u201cHyperCubes\u201d \u2013 the basic building blocks of the ASX-bound company\u2019s claim of \u201ccreating the most efficient AI infrastructure\u201d that it will then contract to the likes of Meta to train or operate new AI models.<\/p>\n

\"AA Firmus facility in Canberra that makes the big, white, metal boxes to house and cool the cutting-edge AI chips powering the company.Alex Ellinghausen <\/p>\n

In truth, the cubes are more like rectangles, but Firmus has always known the power of good branding. The company started as a bitcoin miner, surfing that craze. Then it went all-in on Australian AI, inking a big partnership with established data centre company CDC to build facilities valued at $73 billion.<\/p>\n

Now it is emphasising plans for its own facilities in Indonesia and Malaysia for its future.<\/p>\n

But as the planned public listing barrels closer, Firmus\u2019 narrative has taken a hit this week.<\/p>\n

The boss of Firmus\u2019 partner CDC, Greg Boorer, told online news site Rampart that the deal to build enough data centres to effectively double the nation\u2019s current capacity was off. \u201cThey made other choices regarding doing their own data centre developments,\u201d Boorer said.<\/p>\n

\"CDCCDC Data Centres co-founder Greg Boorer.Louise Kennerley<\/p>\n

Firmus co-chief executive Oliver Curtis confirmed the split, saying it had been \u201cmutually agreed earlier this year\u201d. Curtis said it would not affect Firmus\u2019 development plans, strategy, contracted capacity or partnerships.<\/p>\n

Despite the staggering dollar value of the scotched deal, its demise may not dent investors\u2019 enthusiasm as one might expect, either. Firmus\u2019 backers, who include billionaire James Packer, former treasurer Joe Hockey and Melbourne identity Alex Waislitz, among a host of more doctrinaire finance types, have already looked past typical red flags such as Curtis\u2019 time in prison for insider trading<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At this point, belief in Firmus is an article of faith \u2013 and the weight of money is willing it to become a success. Case in point: emails from Firmus\u2019 bankers, seen by this masthead, show it expects about half of the shares it is offering as part of its public listing to be picked up by \u201ca select group of existing strategic and institutional shareholders, reflecting this group\u2019s strong support\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the fact that Firmus is not being treated as a normal infrastructure company selling warehouses, phone towers or highways. It\u2019s not even really being valued like CDC, which has 20 locations in Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

For one thing, Firmus only has two live facilities: a Melbourne location housed within facilities rented from CDC, and another in Singapore. The rest are either being built or planned.<\/p>\n

Firmus is pitching itself as a booster rocket for spaceship Nvidia, the $US5.76 trillion ($8.2 trillion) chipmaker that is its major partner and backer. The giant chipmaker sells Firmus its GPUs (graphic processing units), is financially backstopping some of its projects, and has a chunk of Firmus\u2019 shares, too.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"After<\/a><\/p>\n

When this masthead visited Firmus\u2019 Canberra facility unannounced, its chief development officer Scott Polsen declined to speak on the record or offer a tour, citing the coming listing. But he made clear his belief in the company was iron-clad.<\/p>\n

Polsen has good reason to be an enthusiast. Firmus bought a portion of his family\u2019s heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business Benmax \u2013 which makes the HyperCubes \u2013 for $300 million this year. Of that, $170 million is in Firmus shares, The Australian Financial Review reported.<\/p>\n

For everyone else, though, there is an easier way to gain exposure to Nvidia: just buy its shares direct.<\/p>\n

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"NickNick Bonyhady<\/a> is the business editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a former deputy federal editor, technology editor and industrial relations reporter.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October 6, 2026 \u2014 6:15pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-918689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918689","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=918689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}