Nvidia in talks to put hundreds of millions more into Firmus after pulled IPO

Nvidia is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Firmus, the Australian AI cloud company that abandoned its initial public offering this month, according to a report by The Information citing people familiar with the discussions. No formal terms or valuations have been disclosed, and TNW said it had not independently verified the reports. Nvidia is already a Firmus investor.

Firmus pulled the float on 9 October 2026 after failing to win enough institutional support for an offering of about US$5 billion at a US$30.6 billion valuation, according to Entrepreneur Asia Pacific. That target was nearly three times the valuation of more than US$10.5 billion set in August, when Firmus closed a US$2 billion equity round backed by Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone-managed funds and Jane Street. The company said its board concluded that proceeding was "not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders" and that it would pursue private capital. Bloomberg reported that Firmus is seeking US$2 billion to US$3 billion privately.

Investors questioned the pricing. John Pearce, chief investment officer of one of Australia's largest pension funds, told Axios his fund stayed out of the offering. Pearce said, "It just doesn't have a compelling valuation," after saying the fund thought Firmus had a compelling story. Entrepreneur Asia Pacific reported that the offering's structure, which would have let existing shareholders exit, also drew scrutiny.

Demand is not the problem so much as conversion to earnings. Firmus said in September that contracted capacity had passed 900 MW, including OpenAI agreements for two AI factories in Malaysia, and it has named Thinking Machines Lab as an anchor customer for its Asian cloud region. Fund managers noted, however, that only about 46 MW was operating. Wells Fargo estimates that building 900 MW of compute would need about US$41 billion of capital spending.

Nvidia's ties to Firmus run deep. The two announced a computing partnership through 2034 in June, centred on a planned 360 MW campus at Batam, Indonesia, covering up to 170,000 Nvidia accelerators. DayOne is developing that campus, and Firmus expects US$25 billion to US$30 billion of offtake over the first six years based on customer commitments. Under the arrangement Nvidia provides credit support for equipment purchases and earns hardware revenue plus a share of cloud revenue from the supported capacity. CDC Data Centres CEO Greg Boorer noted that Firmus would need to raise tens of billions of dollars to scale as planned, after the two parted ways shortly before the IPO withdrawal.

The talks come as The Information's analysis of Nvidia's filings found more than US$170 billion put behind neoclouds and other large customers, including up to US$164.5 billion in guarantees and other commitments. Nvidia has also invested or agreed to invest more than US$7 billion directly in AI cloud providers. Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, told CNBC that, "The demand for the neoclouds is off the charts." He said the sector's constraint is capital rather than customers.