Firmus seeks up to $5bn ASX listing as 900MW contracted but only two of seven factories running

The buyer at the far end of this float is a procurement lead who needs accelerators in Southeast Asia and will be quoted a date in the first quarter of 2027 ^[6].

Firmus was working with a $2bn raise at a $5.5bn valuation in April, and by August the valuation had passed $10.5bn ^[2]. Divide $10.5bn by 900MW and the market is being asked for about $11.7m per contracted megawatt ^[1]. Because the book is past 900MW, that figure is a ceiling.

Batam alone carries an expectation of $25bn to $30bn in committed offtake over its first six years ^[7]. Annualised, that is $4.2bn to $5bn a year from one 360MW site ^[2]. Neither Firmus nor OpenAI disclosed what last week's contract is worth ^[5].

The squeeze on other buyers in the region is looser than the pre-sale makes it look. Southeast Asia is planning four times the data centre capacity it currently runs, and Malaysia carries most of a 6GW pipeline ^[8]. Firmus's whole contracted book is about 15% of that pipeline ^[3]. The reporting does not say whether buyers face a genuine shortage across that pipeline. What it shows is one developer selling its own capacity years before it draws power.

At home the numbers get larger. Project Southgate is 1.6GW across five Australian locations by 2028, starting in Launceston, Tasmania, on an initial build of $4.5bn against a full programme Firmus has costed at $73.3bn ^[9]. Blackstone led a $10bn debt facility in February that pays for the early part ^[10]. Add a $5bn float to that facility and about a fifth of the programme is covered ^[4].

Since July, AI data centres in Australia have been expected to put back more power than they draw, funding new renewable generation instead of buying from the grid ^[12]. Firmus markets its liquid-cooled design as using a third less energy and almost no water ^[13].

For anyone signing capacity in this market, megawatts drawing power over megawatts under contract matters more than the valuation, and at Firmus that is two sites out of seven ^[11]. So does your own offtake against the anchor customer's. OpenAI holds that position at the two Malaysian sites ^[4], and I would expect a later, smaller contract to be served behind it if a site comes up short on power or on accelerators. Nvidia is both a backer of Firmus and the supplier of the hardware at Batam ^[14].