nvidia in talks to back firmus after its pulled ipo

Felix Laurent 21 Oct 2026 3 min read

funding

nvidia is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in firmus, the australian ai cloud provider that pulled its ipo earlier this month, the information reported on october 21 and bloomberg relayed. no amount or terms are public. nvidia is already a firmus shareholder and its gpu supplier, so the cheque would go to a company whose business is renting out computing built on nvidia chips.

what was reported

according to the information, nvidia is discussing an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in firmus grid. bloomberg carried the report; nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment, per investinglive.

firmus is a neocloud: it rents out ai computing capacity rather than selling software. nvidia already holds stakes in firmus and in several of its peers.

why the ipo fell apart

firmus pulled the listing on october 8, about two weeks before its planned asx debut on october 23. the deal failed to draw enough demand at the marketed price, days after the company said it had indications of interest above the offer size, bloomberg reported.

firmus planned a $5.5b listing at a$11 a share, which would have valued it at about $30b. according to the australian and the afr, cited by startup fortune, the price was cut to as low as a$8.25 before the deal was scrapped. the company had guided investors to a a$77m loss for the first half of fiscal 2027, reuters reported, and only about 5% of the capacity it has sold is built and running, against roughly 25% at rival nextdc.

the capacity figure matters most: firmus has two facilities running, and the rest of the capacity it has sold is still in planning or under construction. after the ipo collapsed, bloomberg reported the company was exploring a private round of about $3b.

what nvidia already has in firmus

nvidia is both supplier and shareholder. in october 2025, nvidia, cdc data centres and firmus signed a partnership worth up to a$73.3b, per startup fortune. its centrepiece, project southgate, was meant to reach 1.6gw; firmus and cdc ended it after deploying 42mw, datacenterdynamics reported.

earlier this year coatue led a $505m round in firmus, with nvidia's participation subject to closing conditions. ahead of the ipo, about half the book was reportedly set to go to existing investors, possibly including nvidia and blackstone.

why nvidia would write the cheque

nvidia has not explained the talks. our reading of the public record points to four reasons.

a buyer of gpus stays funded. neoclouds like firmus and coreweave buy nvidia chips and rent them out, a channel outside the hyperscalers that build their own silicon. money invested in firmus is likely to come back as gpu orders, which is exactly why critics call these deals circular.
the market story. bloomberg framed the pulled ipo as a warning for ai funding. a week later, jensen huang publicly defended coreweave, where nvidia is also supplier and investor, after a selloff in its shares and bonds, bloomberg reported. backing firmus sends the same signal.
an existing stake to protect. nvidia is already on the cap table and in the southgate partnership. a new round at a lower price is cheaper than writing the old one down.
it can afford it. nvidia's market value is near $6t and it announced a record $150b buyback, per bloomberg. hundreds of millions barely registers.

the deal fits a busy month: nvidia discussed raising its stake in reflection ai on october 10, and joined pigment's $250m round announced on october 20, both per bloomberg.

what is still unknown

two terms of the deal are not public yet.

the size of the investment, its price and whether it replaces or joins the private round of about $3b firmus was exploring.
whether the money comes as equity, compute credits or prepaid capacity – the form nvidia has used with other neoclouds is not disclosed for this deal.

it is also unclear whether firmus revives the ipo later. a supplier's cheque does not build the 95% of sold capacity that is not yet running.