Firmus Fiasco Was Investors ‘Doing Their Job,’ Says Pension CIO

The failed public listing of Firmus Grid Ltd. shows investors are becoming more discerning about the wave of opportunities emerging from the artificial intelligence buildout, according to one of the nation’s top pension chiefs.

Firmus “is an example of investors doing their job,” Aware Super Chief Investment Officer Simon Warner told the Citi Australia and New Zealand Investment Conference in Sydney on Wednesday, responding to a question about the vast amounts of capital expenditure needed to build AI infrastructure.

“We are now in that phase where investors have got their head around it” and “there’s this patent realization the supply of investible opportunities is going to be very large,” Warner said. “You have the opportunity — and indeed the obligation — to pick and choose where you’re going to deploy, because it’s a multi-year process.”

Firmus abandoned its attempt at one of Australia’s biggest-ever initial public offerings earlier this month, after the data center company failed to lure global investors increasingly wary over lofty AI valuations. Firmus had sought to raise as much as $5.5 billion in a deal that would have valued the company at about $30 billion.

Warner said Aware Super — which oversees A$240 billion ($168 billion) — has been positioning itself “almost exclusively at the more defensive end” of opportunities tied to AI-related capital expenditure. While the demand for computing power and tokens is real and should ultimately benefit the economy, he said the pension was being selective about opportunities.