By Nate Gregory
Publication Date: 2026-10-09 22:48:00
How the deal came apart
What started as a marquee listing for an Nvidia Corp.-backed AI data center operator quickly turned into triage. Late Tuesday in Sydney, fund after fund told the deal team the $30 billion valuation was a stretch. By Wednesday morning, it was obvious the IPO could not proceed as sold, triggering a scramble to slash the size to roughly $3 billion or reset the valuation between $20 billion and $25 billion. The internal code name was Australis, but the rescue effort never landed.
By late Thursday morning local time, bookbuilding closed as scheduled with no clear word on pricing or structure, and anxiety swirled around whether there was enough support at the A$11 marketed level. In Sydney trading, shares of backer Maas Group Holdings Ltd. fell by as much as 30%, the biggest drop on record.
Red flags, radio silence, and investor pullback
The broader market first got uneasy when it emerged that existing shareholders would not be subject to escrow, raising the risk of a flood of stock. By Wednesday, push notifications lit up with headlines flagging weak demand and the possibility of a price cut. One fund manager even cut short a coffee meeting in Hong Kong to verify what was happening, and that afternoon bled into a long night of confusion.
Updates were scarce. Some investors trimmed their orders; others yanked them entirely as the situation looked shaky. On Bloomberg TV, Ten Cap Investment’s Jun Bei Liu, a co-founder and lead portfolio manager, said,…
