Firmus co-founder Oliver Curtis has described the AI infrastructure company’s failure to attract investors for its $44 billion mega-float as a “great loss for Australia”.
Speaking for the first time since the company’s planned ASX debut spectacularly collapsed, Curtis said Australians’ “dim views” of people willing to “take a risk” were pushing start-ups offshore.
“I think it’s a missed opportunity for Australia, to be brutally honest,” Curtis, who is married to PR queen Roxy Jacenko, told The Australian in Singapore.
“Ultimately [Firmus] should be a home-grown hero, manufacturing amazing technology with an amazing pipeline of opportunity … and it is disappointing that Australia decided there was a mantra of disbelief.”
“It’s another chapter, and we will ensure that we live on as a business. Nothing changes. Watch this space.”
Curtis, who served a year in prison for insider trading a decade ago, said he hoped history would ultimately regard Firmus as a “global Australian tech success story”.
However, he warned that the alternative could be a brain drain, with entrepreneurs and companies moving overseas to secure funding and establish their headquarters.
“I think there is an opportunity that Australia can capture,” he said. “We’ll continue to support what is a great ecosystem and industry for Australia.”
Firmus Technologies founder Oliver Curtis has travelled to Asia seeking new backers after the company spectacularly failed to attract investors for its IPO last week
Firmus co-founders Oliver Curtis and Tim Rosenfield
Curtis was released from Cooma prison in 2017. The idea for Firmus Technologies reportedly began taking shape while he was behind bars
“What has happened over the last 48 hours makes no difference to my company. Time will tell.”
Only last week, Firmus appeared to be heading for a major local success. The company was on course for Australia’s second-biggest stock market debut after Telstra, with shares priced at $11 and a total valuation of $44 billion.
Backed by billions from major US investors, including chipmaking giant Nvidia and investment firm Blackstone, Firmus had hoped to raise a further $7.9 billion by last Thursday ahead of its planned October 23 stock market debut.
Curtis even claimed in a message to brokers that “indications [were] well in excess of the offer price”.
But the proposed listing was abandoned on Friday amid concerns that the company was underdelivering and that Curtis was being too “greedy”.
Firmus’s ambitious plan to build data centres packed with powerful computer chips has so far resulted only in the development of smaller AI computing facilities.
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Investors were concerned that Firmus had yet to demonstrate it could build and operate the vast data centres it aims to roll out across Australia and Asia.
A New York hedge fund also raised concerns about Curtis’s 2016 insider trading conviction, for which he served 12 months of a two-year prison sentence.
Curtis with his socialite and publicist wife, Roxy Jacenko
The couple live a jet-set lifestyle, regularly travelling to Europe on a private jet. Their children board in Switzerland
Investment fund manager Michael Farzis, a prospective investor who declined the Initial Public Offering (IPO) – told the Daily Mail the initial pricing was ‘very aggressive’.
‘It’s a surprise given what we were told earlier in the week because investors were largely told that it was oversubscribed, and there were indications well in excess of demand’ he said.
‘It looks like that wasn’t true, and that’s probably hurt the IPO.
‘I think the other interesting thing is what this does globally… this was a huge IPO (so) the question is whether this puts a chill around the whole global AI trade, because lots of people were watching this IPO.
‘I think they reached too high and I think they were way too aggressive in their valuation expectations, which ran way ahead of what they’d been able to execute.
‘Had they had more modest expectations, I think they’d had a better chance of succeeding in listing.’
When asked whether he had misled investors with his messaging around the sale, Curtis rejected the suggestion and labelled the remark ‘disgraceful’.
‘If you want to stoke a reaction … just be careful what you say,’ he said.
‘We’re in a perfectly good position. There’s no fire sale; people can dance on my grave.
‘Hopefully we can be looked at in 12 months’ time (or even) six or three months’ time (and be) delivering exactly what we said we would be delivering.’
Firmus is now reportedly seeking an additional US$3billion in additional funding and is targeting wealthy private investors across Australia and Asia.
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