Roxy Jacenko’s husband, Oliver Curtis, has secured a landmark agreement for his artificial intelligence infrastructure business, as the company moves toward what could become the biggest ASX listing of the decade.
Curtis, who launched Sydney-based Firmus Technologies in 2019, signed a multi-year deal on Tuesday to supply compute capacity to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
The agreement is set to lift Firmus’ total data centre capacity to 900 megawatts across Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, strengthening its position in the fast-growing AI infrastructure market.
Firmus already has two sites in operation, while a further five data centres are slated for completion by the end of 2028.
At its core, Firmus provides the physical backbone needed for artificial intelligence: high-powered data centres filled with advanced computer chips that OpenAI can use to train AI models and keep ChatGPT running for users around the world.
Curtis and his cousin and co-founder Tom Rosenfield have now secured deals with three of the world’s biggest AI companies – OpenAI, Nvidia and Meta – as Firmus prepares for an ASX float that could value the company at up to $30billion.
News of Curtis’ major wins came months after he marked the nine-year anniversary of his release from Cooma Correctional Centre having been granted parole on his conviction of conspiracy to insider trade.
Curtis was convicted in June 2016 of conspiring to commit insider trading using confidential information, and served 12 months of a two-year prison sentence.
Oliver Curtis (pictured with wife Roxy Jacenko) has inked a major deal between his AI firm Firmus Technologies, and OpenAI which is worth $1.39trillion
Curtis started up Firmus Technologies in 2019, which was headquartered in Singapore where he lives for part of the year with Jacenko and their children, now in their teens
He was found guilty over confidential tip-offs provided by his old school friend John Joseph Hartman.
Hartman was an equities dealer at Orion Asset Management, which managed billions of dollars of investments.
Because of his job, Hartman knew in advance when Orion was planning to buy or sell large amounts of particular shares – and those trades could move the market price.
The court found that Hartman provided Curtis with confidential information about Orion Asset Management’s trading intentions on 45 occasions between May 25, 2007 and June 11, 2008.
Curtis used the tip-offs to make trades before Orion carried out its planned trades.
Curtis was 30 when he was convicted, but the sentencing judge said he was just 21 when he committed the offence.
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The duo had been best mates at Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview, the elite private Jesuit boarding school on Sydney’s lower north shore.
Firmus Technologies operate a site at St Leonards, in Launceston, Tasmania
The germination of Curtis’ AI company began when he left jail (above, exiting Cooma prison in June 2017)
Before they were convicted, the pair drank at city bars and made a total of $1.4 million from the illegal trades, splashing the proceeds on luxury items and trips.
Hartman, son of the obstetrician to the Packer and Murdoch families, and Curtis, the son of the executive chairman of rare earth miner Lynas, were living together in a $3,000-a-week Bondi apartment at the time.
Hartman bought a $60,000 Mini Cooper and a $20,000 Ducati motorcycle. They took their friends on holidays to gamble in Las Vegas casinos, and paid for strippers at Cirque de Soleil.
They took a helijet from Vancouver to ski in Whistler, Canada because they would be ‘too hungover to drive’.
Even before things came to a head, the old school mates had begun to fall out with one another over money to support their lifestyle and Curtis’ gambling habit.
In August 2008, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission began scrutinising Hartman’s stockbroking account after it detected illegal trading.
On January 13, 2009, Hartman’s broker froze the $2.6m account, making Hartman believe he had been caught red-handed.
Five days later, he rang his father, moved out of the Bondi flat, quit his job and a day after was confessing everything inside a room to ASIC investigators.
Hartman was jailed aged 25 in 2010 and served 15 months in prison, and Curtis’ case finally went to trial in 2016.
During a tense three-week trial, Jacenko, who’d married Curtis in 2012, wore a series of designer outfits worth thousands including, on one day, carrying a black crocodile skin Hermes Birkin bag, reportedly worth $162,000.
Jacenko submitted a letter to the court after her husband was found guilty, pleading to Justice Lucy McCallum that Curtis was the primary carer of her children as she had a ’24 hour, 7 days a week’ job.
Curtis debuted on The Australian’s ‘Richest 250’ list this year with an estimated paper fortune of $1.29billion.