From Sydney:
What strikes you first about the Firmus Technologies story is not the staggering sums of money involved, though they are staggering enough. It is the speed. In less than five months, this Australian-founded, Singapore-based company raised more than $900 million in equity, then secured a further US$10 billion debt facility led by Blackstone and Coatue Capital. For a business that started life mining bitcoin in 2019, that is a trajectory that would test the credulity of even the most optimistic venture capital pitch deck.
At the centre of it all is Oliver Curtis, co-CEO and co-founder of Firmus Technologies. Curtis is the son of mining and banking executive Nick Curtis, the husband of Sydney publicist and media personality Roxy Jacenko, and, since 2016, a man with a criminal conviction for conspiracy to commit insider trading.
Curtis was sentenced to two years' imprisonment after being found guilty by a Supreme Court jury of conspiring to commit insider trading with his former best friend John Hartman. The court ordered that he be released after serving one year upon entering into a recognisance to be of good behaviour for a further 12 months. The scheme involved Curtis using confidential information between May 2007 and June 2008 to trade on share price movements, generating a total net profit of just over $1.43 million. The conspiracy centred on Hartman passing Curtis instructions based on inside knowledge of trading intentions at his employer, Orion Asset Management.
That Curtis has returned from that fall to co-lead one of the most heavily capitalised technology companies in Australian corporate history is, depending on your perspective, either a testament to redemption and entrepreneurial grit, or a question that investors and regulators alike should be asking loudly before a planned ASX listing later this year.
The Business Case
Firmus was founded in 2019 by Curtis, Tim Rosenfield, and Jonathan Levee, and originally focused on bitcoin mining. The company pivoted to what it calls "green AI factories," describing them as "a new kind of infrastructure designed specifically to meet the needs of energy-intensive AI computing workloads, with a focus on energy efficiency, high performance, and sustainability."
Firmus touts cooling technology able to operate at a low power usage efficiency of 1.03, delivering AI compute capacity that it claims uses 99 per cent less water and 30 per cent less energy than competitors. Those are bold assertions, and not all market observers are prepared to take them at face value. Still, the company has attracted partners that carry real institutional weight. Its investor register includes Nvidia, Ellerston Capital, Phil King's Regal Funds Management, Archibald Capital, Tectonic Investment Management, Alex Waislitz, and the Pratt family.
The company announced a US$10 billion debt financing facility led by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, Blackstone Credit and Insurance, and supported by Coatue. The financing is intended to fund the next phase of Project Southgate, the national rollout of Firmus's AI Factory platform based on Nvidia's DSX reference architecture. The transaction has been described as one of the largest private debt financings in Australian history.
Construction is currently underway on initial sites in Tasmania and Melbourne for Project Southgate. A Firmus spokesperson has indicated the Melbourne and Tasmanian centres are expected to come online by April and August respectively, while staff will move into the Canberra centre in the first half of 2026. The Sydney centre is also under construction, with early work begun in Perth.
Southgate's ambitious timeline would see it scale up to 1.6 gigawatts of AI factories by 2028, with forecasts of over 20,000 jobs across construction, advanced manufacturing, operations, and technical roles.
The Sceptics' Corner
While big-name money is backing Firmus, not everyone in the market is convinced by the story, with its co-founder's colourful past and sustainability claims among the concerns. The sheer pace of capital accumulation — from a $1.85 billion valuation in September 2025 to $6 billion just two months later — has prompted some investors to wonder whether the numbers reflect genuine enterprise value or the inflated enthusiasm of a global AI infrastructure boom that has, in some corners, acquired the feel of a speculative cycle.
The insider trading conviction is not a trivial footnote. Curtis was found guilty of insider trading, and academics studying the case have argued that such behaviour directly harms ordinary investors' retirement wealth and damages the integrity of investment systems. The sentencing judge noted that "punishment by a sentence of imprisonment has real bite as a deterrent to others in the case of white-collar crime" and that the threat of imprisonment, if credible, operates as a powerful deterrent to men and women of business.
Against those concerns must be weighed the substance of what Firmus is actually building. Curtis served his sentence. There is no suggestion of any misconduct since his release. And the company's backers are not naive retail punters: Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, conducted its own due diligence before committing to what Bloomberg described as one of Australia's largest-ever private credit financings. Ellerston Capital, a reputable Sydney-based fund manager, also has a board seat.
Speaking at a Morgans Investment Breakfast last year, Curtis acknowledged the unconventional background he and his co-founders brought to the data centre industry. The comment was intended as a reflection on how three outsiders had stumbled into building one of the most hyped names in the Australian investment landscape, a company seen as among the most exposed to the AI boom sweeping global markets. For more sceptical investors, however, Curtis's remarks could just as easily have been taken as a reference to something else entirely: his insider trading conviction.
The Bigger Picture
The Firmus story sits inside a much larger global phenomenon. Moody's Ratings expects investment in AI-related data centres to surpass $3 trillion over the next five years, with much of it funded through debt. Australia, with its renewable energy assets, proximity to Asian markets, and stable regulatory environment, has real structural advantages in this race. Tasmania's hydro-powered grid is not an incidental detail in Firmus's pitch; it is a genuine competitive differentiator in an industry where energy costs and carbon footprints are becoming central to procurement decisions by large technology customers.
Firmus is reportedly eyeing an initial public offering, and has enlisted JP Morgan and Bank of America to advise. Curtis has indicated in comments to the Australian Financial Review that an IPO is expected this year, with the company said to be targeting a mid-year ASX debut. At that point, the scrutiny will intensify considerably. Public markets are less forgiving than private ones, and retail investors deserve the full picture.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission will have its own view on disclosure obligations, particularly around the governance history of founders. Whether Australia's regulatory framework is adequately calibrated to handle the due diligence demands of AI infrastructure IPOs at this scale is a legitimate question for policymakers and market participants alike.
The honest assessment is that Firmus may well be exactly what it claims to be: a genuine, world-class AI infrastructure builder capable of positioning Australia as an Asia-Pacific compute hub. The investors backing it are not fools, the technology partnerships are real, and the demand for AI compute is undeniable. But investors approaching a future public offering should do so with eyes open. A company's founders do not define its products, but in Australian corporate governance, character and accountability have always mattered. The market, in due course, will deliver its own verdict.