AINEWS
Firmus says three Tasmanian "AI factories" will use water like four restaurants. Locals point to 15 percent of the state's power
Blackstone and Nvidia backed Firmus is pitching three data centre style AI sites across the Tamar Valley.
Blackstone and Nvidia backed Firmus is pitching three data centre style AI sites across the Tamar Valley.
Blackstone- and Nvidia-backed Firmus is asking northern Tasmania to host three data-centre-style "AI factories" drawing, by the company's own figures, a combined 12.7 million litres of water a year. Locals have organised a 4,600-signature petition against the proposed George Town site and a string of community meetings across the Tamar Valley.
The company is Firmus Technologies, a Hobart-founded AI infrastructure start-up now valued at A$6 billion. Per co-founder Oliver Curtis, speaking from the under-construction St Leonards site, the per-site breakdown is 3.3 million litres at St Leonards, 8.7 million at George Town, and 700,000 at Wesley Vale. Those are the only water numbers on the public record, and they come from the company.
In a recent Examiner interview, Curtis pushed back against what he called "inaccurate" community information. His chosen comparison: St Leonards alone uses about as much water as a single Sydney food-court restaurant, around 3.4 million litres a year, and the full Firmus footprint equates to roughly four such restaurants. He framed the public backlash as the product of conflating Tasmanian-sited AI infrastructure with the much thirstier hyperscale data centres of the US and Asian mainland.
The framing is the company's, not a neutral benchmark. The Examiner does not establish a like-for-like methodology for the restaurant comparison, and the source basis contains no independent engineering assessment of the Firmus sites. Curtis's analogy appeared alongside a new energy policy page committing Firmus to underwrite more renewable energy than it consumes, a notable pledge in a state that runs predominantly on hydro, but a pledge that does not address the underlying volume question.
That volume question is the one locals keep circling. A George Town community petition has gathered roughly 4,600 signatures, and multiple community meetings have been held across the Tamar Valley this winter. Neither the petition organisers nor the meeting hosts have, on the public record, contested Curtis's per-site water figures head-on. Their concern runs through a different number.
ABC News reported on 15 June 2026 that, if all three sites proceed, Firmus is on track to become Tasmania's biggest single power user. An Australian Financial Review analysis on 24 April 2026 put a more precise figure on that claim: around 26,000 Nvidia chips across the planned footprint, drawing roughly 15 percent of Tasmania's electricity. Both figures originate with the company or its infrastructure partners, not with the Tasmanian energy regulator or the state's grid operator. Neither has been rebutted in the firm's published commitments or in Curtis's Examiner remarks.
That gap is the real story. The water debate is an argument about scale and trust at a level locals can audit and the company can reframe. The power debate is an argument about whether Tasmania's small, hydro-dominated grid should host a single private consumer on this scale.
It is also a debate with a financial clock attached. StartupDaily reported that Firmus is eyeing a further A$725 million raise ahead of a planned ASX listing. A retail IPO prospectus in that window would force public disclosure of operating data, including water use per site, energy contracts, and grid impact modelling, that the current dispute is, in effect, asking the company to volunteer. The restaurant analogy is a graceful way to manage that question. A like-for-like engineering disclosure would not be.
What to watch next: whether the firm's energy-and-water commitments page evolves into a site-by-site disclosure document, whether the Tasmanian EPA or the state's economic regulator open a comment window on the George Town proposal, and whether the petition organisers surface their own counter-data before the next Tamar Valley meeting.