Hummingbird AI defends proposed T&T data centre project

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Hum­ming­bird AI has moved to counter grow­ing pub­lic scep­ti­cism over its pro­posed mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in­fra­struc­ture project in Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­leas­ing de­tails of its lead­er­ship, in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners and long-term vi­sion af­ter fac­ing crit­i­cism over its lim­it­ed pub­lic pro­file.

The com­pa­ny, which signed one of three Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing (MoUs) with the Gov­ern­ment last Fri­day, has come un­der scruti­ny af­ter ques­tions were raised about the ab­sence of a pub­lic web­site, lim­it­ed cor­po­rate foot­print and claims cir­cu­lat­ing on­line that it was lit­tle more than a shell com­pa­ny.

In a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment high­light­ing de­tails of the pro­posed project and its ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the com­mu­ni­ty where it is list­ed to be de­vel­oped, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the com­pa­ny’s four prin­ci­pal lead­ers are list­ed as Trinida­di­an en­tre­pre­neur Marc-Kwe­si Far­rell, dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture spe­cial­ist Ash­ton So­ni­at, in­fra­struc­ture fi­nance ex­ec­u­tive Nicholaus Rohled­er and ma­jor project de­liv­ery ex­pert Jake McE­wan.

To­geth­er, the com­pa­ny said the lead­er­ship team has col­lec­tive­ly over­seen more than US$10 bil­lion in in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, US$4 bil­lion in cap­i­tal for­ma­tion and over one gi­gawatt of dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture projects across North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope, Asia and the Mid­dle East.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the com­pa­ny was cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly to de­vel­op large-scale AI in­fra­struc­ture projects rather than op­er­ate as a tra­di­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy firm.

The com­pa­ny al­so said it is backed by US-based en­gi­neer­ing firm The Shaw Group, which has pro­vid­ed a for­mal let­ter ex­press­ing its in­ten­tion to sup­port en­gi­neer­ing, fab­ri­ca­tion, in­fra­struc­ture and pow­er-gen­er­a­tion so­lu­tions for the T&T project. It said Shaw is cur­rent­ly in­volved in more than 1.8 gi­gawatts of hy­per­scale in­fra­struc­ture projects in the US. It said in­ter­na­tion­al law firm Hogan Lovells is serv­ing as lead le­gal coun­sel for project struc­tur­ing and in­sti­tu­tion­al cap­i­tal for­ma­tion, while dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing with US-based in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors and in­fra­struc­ture funds. How­ev­er, it said those ne­go­ti­a­tions re­main con­fi­den­tial be­cause of the project’s ear­ly com­mer­cial stage.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, Hum­ming­bird AI was es­tab­lished to “orig­i­nate, struc­ture, fi­nance and de­liv­er na­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant AI in­fra­struc­ture projects,” bring­ing to­geth­er in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ers, en­gi­neer­ing firms, tech­nol­o­gy part­ners and in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors un­der a sin­gle de­vel­op­ment plat­form.

The com­pa­ny said its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude project orig­i­na­tion, com­mer­cial strat­e­gy, cap­i­tal for­ma­tion, strate­gic part­ner­ships and co­or­di­nat­ing the en­gi­neer­ing and fi­nanc­ing re­quired to move the project from con­cept through con­struc­tion and long-term op­er­a­tion.

Ad­dress­ing broad­er con­cerns about the project it­self, Hum­ming­bird AI stressed that the MoU signed with the T&T Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sents on­ly the be­gin­ning of the de­vel­op­ment process.

The com­pa­ny said no con­struc­tion can pro­ceed with­out de­tailed en­gi­neer­ing stud­ies, en­vi­ron­men­tal as­sess­ments, util­i­ty analy­sis, reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals and con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers, de­scrib­ing those process­es as es­sen­tial to de­ter­min­ing whether the project is ul­ti­mate­ly vi­able.

The Gov­ern­ment has sought to al­lay pub­lic con­cerns over the po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal and in­fra­struc­ture im­pact of the projects, say­ing it has been plan­ning the de­vel­op­ments across sev­er­al min­istries and that wa­ter sup­ply to res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial cus­tomers will not be af­fect­ed.

Hum­ming­bird AI ac­knowl­edged pub­lic con­cerns sur­round­ing elec­tric­i­ty de­mand, wa­ter use and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts, say­ing those is­sues are le­git­i­mate and will form part of the project’s tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion. It said op­tions such as be­hind-the-me­ter pow­er gen­er­a­tion, re­new­able en­er­gy in­te­gra­tion, ad­vanced cool­ing sys­tems and al­ter­na­tive wa­ter sources, in­clud­ing non-potable wa­ter or de­sali­na­tion where ap­pro­pri­ate, would all be as­sessed dur­ing the en­gi­neer­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­view process.

The doc­u­ment out­lined the com­pa­ny’s role in ad­vanc­ing the pro­posed AI in­fra­struc­ture cam­pus, be­gin­ning with an ini­tial 150-megawatt de­ploy­ment with am­bi­tions to scale be­yond 500MW over time.

The com­pa­ny main­tained that T&T’s in­dus­tri­al ex­pe­ri­ence, com­pet­i­tive en­er­gy costs and strate­gic lo­ca­tion po­si­tion it to be­come a re­gion­al AI in­fra­struc­ture hub if the project ul­ti­mate­ly pro­ceeds. It said the ini­tia­tive could gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty, skilled em­ploy­ment and for­eign ex­change earn­ings while sup­port­ing broad­er eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.