Australian billionaire Oliver Curtis seeks $10 billion for Nvidia chips before Firmus's ASX float

Firmus Technologies, the Australian artificial intelligence infrastructure company co-founded by Oliver Curtis, is in talks with lenders over roughly $10 billion of financing to buy Nvidia chips for an Indonesian data centre potentially one of Asia's largest AI infrastructure deals.

The package would comprise about $7.5 billion of debt across senior and mezzanine tranches, plus roughly $2.5 billion of equity, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the discussions. The facility may run for five years.

Firmus was founded in Sydney in 2019 by Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee. Curtis is co-chief executive.

He was convicted of insider trading in Australia in 2016 and served about a year in prison. He has since built Firmus into a company preparing for what would rank among the largest listings in Australian market history.

The financing supports a deal Firmus signed with Nvidia worth US$30 billion (A$43 billion) to build a 360-megawatt Nvidia DSX "AI factory" in Batam, Indonesia an island 26km from Singapore, close enough to serve the city-state's constrained power and land market.

The company plans seven AI data centres across Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia within two years. Its most advanced domestic site is at St Leonards near Launceston, with approval secured for another at Long Reach in Tasmania's Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone and a third sought at Wesley Vale.

Firmus is preparing an initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange, reported for the fourth quarter, seeking up to $7 billion at a target valuation of around $50 billion which would exceed Canva's. The company has said it is targeting $30 billion in revenue.