MARKET AT 7
Good evening. Tonight's issue is really one question asked on two continents: who's actually paying for the AI boom, and at what price. Australia's biggest float in years just answered it by walking away, hours after Wall Street's chip stocks took the same question on the chin.
MARKET AT 7
AI funding doubts widen as Firmus scraps its $44bn ASX float
Firmus scraps $44bn ASX float as AI funding doubts widen
Firmus Technologies withdrew its application to list on the ASX on Friday, a day after closing its order books, after investors baulked at the $11-a-share price and the roughly $7 billion raise behind a float that would have been Australia's biggest since Telstra's in 1997. The AI data-centre operator, in which Nvidia holds a 7.2% stake, cited "recent market volatility and conditions" and said it would instead pursue private funding, ABC News reports. UniSuper chief investment officer John Pearce called the float "priced to perfection" and said it "just doesn't have a compelling valuation," even though he believes the underlying business does; Morningstar's Lochlan Holloway flagged Firmus's roughly US$30 billion in expected debt, warning that "credit is the common thread running through essentially every boom and bust cycle."
Wall Street had already made the same point overnight. The S&P 500 fell 0.46% to 7,765.36 and the Nasdaq dropped 1.25% to 27,193.34 on Thursday after a Financial Times report, via TheStreet Pro, showed OpenAI's revenue run rate sitting near $50 billion in September, about $20 billion below what the company had earlier signalled. Chip stocks bore the brunt: the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 3.4%, with Nvidia down 2.9%, Micron 4.8% and AMD 3.9%. The ASX 200 shrugged it off regardless, rising 0.6% to 8,716 as money rotated into software names like Xero and WiseTech rather than AI infrastructure plays, while the Australian dollar firmed 0.4% to 69.85 US cents.
Source: ABC News, 9 Oct 2026 → · Source: TheStreet Pro, 8 Oct 2026 → · Source: ABC News, 9 Oct 2026 →
ALSO TODAY
NZX 50 edges up 0.4% to 13,749 to close out the week. New Zealand's benchmark index added 57.50 points on Friday, a modest bounce after a soft week, Trading Economics reports.
Oil drops as Trump rules out an Iran strike before the midterms. Brent crude fell about 1% to $103.20 a barrel and US benchmark WTI eased to around $89.65 after President Trump said talks with Tehran were "productive" and ruled out military action before the 3 November midterms, Reuters reports via FXStreet. Prices had climbed on the opposite report just a day earlier.
Gold ticks up to $4,171 as bitcoin holds near $82,400. Spot gold rose 0.92% on softer Treasury yields and a weaker US dollar, Trading Economics data shows, while bitcoin sat near $82,371, down 0.6% on the day after $487 million flowed out of spot ETFs, CoinGecko figures reported by Analytics Insight show.
THE MARKET WRAP
OUR TAKE:
Firmus and OpenAI are the same story told at different scales. One is a $44 billion Australian float that got pulled before it had the chance to disappoint anyone; the other is the company sitting at the centre of the entire AI trade quietly running $20 billion behind where it said it would be. Neither is a crash. Both are the market finally asking who's picking up the bill, instead of just assuming someone will.
What's actually strange is how little it took to move everything else today. One line from Trump about not hitting Iran before the midterms knocked a percent off oil, nudged bitcoin back above $81,000 and took some heat out of gold's rate-hedge bid. Markets that jumpy aren't confident. They're waiting for the next headline to tell them what to think.