From $44billion dream to Firmus flop: Oliver Curtis breaks his silence to blast ‘dim’ Australians – and vows he’ll be proved right: ‘Watch this space’
Firmus co-founder Oliver Curtis says the AI infrastructure firm’s failure to attract investors with its $44billion mega-float last week was a ‘great loss for Australia’.
Speaking for the first time since his ASX launch spectacularly imploded, Curtis said Australians’ ‘dim views’ of people ‘taking a risk’ were forcing start-ups offshore.
‘I think it’s a missed opportunity for Australia, to be brutally honest,’ the husband of 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, jailed for a year for insider trading a decade ago, said he hoped history would ultimately look back on his company as being a ‘global Australian tech success story’.
But he warned the alternative was a brain-drain exodus of entrepreneurs and companies heading overseas to find funding and base their HQs.
‘I think there is an opportunity that Australia can capture,’ he added. ‘We’ll continue to support what is a great ecosystem and industry for Australia.
Firmus Technologies founder Oliver Curtis has flown to Asia in a quest for new backers after his company spectacularly failed to attract investors with its IPO last week
Curtis and Firmus co-founder Tim Rosenfield
Curtis being released from Cooma prison in 2017. The seeds for the idea of Firmus Technologies reportedly began to germinate while he was behind bars
‘What has happened over the last 48 hours makes no difference to my company. Time will tell.’
Last week all signs pointed towards a local success story. Firmus was on track for Australia’s second-biggest stock market debut in history behind Telstra, with shares priced at $11 each and a total company valuation of $44billion.
With billions in backing from major US investors, including chipmaking giant Nvidia and investment firm Blackstone, Firmus had hoped to secure a further $7.9billion by last Thursday ahead of its planned October 23 stock market debut.
Curtis went as far as to say in a broker message that ‘indications [were] well in excess of the offer price’.
However, the planned debut was scrapped on Friday amid concerns the company was underdelivering and Curtis was being too ‘greedy’.
Ambitious plans to build data centres filled with powerful computer chips has so far only seen smaller AI computing facilities developed.
Investors feared Firmus has yet to prove it can build and operate the massive data centres it hopes to roll out across Australia and Asia.
One New York hedge fund even raised concerns about Curtis’s 2016 insider trading conviction, which saw him serve 12 months of a two-year jail sentence.
Curtis and 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.
READ MORE: Inside the incredible comeback of Roxy Jacenko’s husband: From jailhouse to billionaire after massive ChatGPT deal
