Major AI data centre already in works in T&T but location a secret

Asha Javeed

[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment has al­ready es­tab­lished and equipped a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre (the most pow­er­ful) in T&T, but has not dis­closed its lo­ca­tion.

In De­cem­ber 2025, ac­cord­ing to pro­cure­ment no­tices by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (MPAAI), the Gov­ern­ment sole-se­lect­ed and leased land for 20 years for the da­ta cen­tre.

In an ad­di­tion­al no­tice, it sole-se­lect­ed a con­trac­tor to con­duct civ­il works for the da­ta cen­tre to be com­plet­ed last month (June), with a 10-day stand­still pe­ri­od.

It al­so pro­cured rat­ed en­gines, equip­ment, op­er­a­tion staff, jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance ser­vices for one-year pe­ri­ods. (SEE TA­BLE).

That Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre project be­gan in 2022 un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In 2023, the then gov­ern­ment, through iGovTT, in­vit­ed ten­ders for a pro­posed Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre fa­cil­i­ty at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. That ini­tial ten­der had al­so in­clud­ed a so­lar park, ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing 500 kilo­watts of elec­tric­i­ty and that the da­ta cen­tre should, “at a min­i­mum Tier 3 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at the point of com­mis­sion­ing if the el­e­ments for Tier 4 are not avail­able with­in the time­line spec­i­fied.”

In 2024, that es­tate, a flag­ship project of Chi­na-Trinidad and To­ba­go co­op­er­a­tion un­der the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive, was opened and is close to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. The da­ta cen­tre is not list­ed as part of the es­tate’s ten­ants.

The da­ta cen­tre was fund­ed by a US$120 mil­lion CAF De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean loan. It was done through the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, now MPAAI. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the equip­ment for the cen­tre had al­ready been ac­quired pri­or to the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion and has since been set up.

To date, the Gov­ern­ment has not made the de­tails of that da­ta cen­tre or its lo­ca­tion pub­lic, even as it has drawn down from its CAF loan to fund the fa­cil­i­ty.

There has been no pub­lic in­for­ma­tion about the project and since post elec­tion and no pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion on any mod­i­fi­ca­tions done to the project.

Fur­ther, there is no pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion on whether it is op­er­a­tional or has es­tab­lished agree­ments with the coun­try’s util­i­ties.

In­stead on Ju­ly 10, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T signed three MOU’s with two of them be­ing for the pro­posed es­tab­lish­ment of large-scale da­ta cen­tres and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) in­fra­struc­ture- one with Ernst & Young (EY) LLP to part­ner with third par­ties on a 300-megawatt da­ta cen­tre and an­oth­er with Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings, for a pro­posed 150-megawatt cen­tre with the abil­i­ty to scale up oth­er 500 megawatts.

As it stands, T&T al­ready has five da­ta cen­tres- Fu­jit­su, TSTT, Dig­i­cel, Ca­ble and Wire­less and Air Link. Those would be clas­si­fied as Tier 3 da­ta cen­tres.

The Gov­ern­ment’s da­ta cen­tre, as well as the pro­posed Hum­ming­bird and EY cen­tres, would be clas­si­fied as Tier 4.

An in­dus­try source raised con­cern about the Gov­ern­ment sign­ing MOUs with com­pa­nies rather than a coun­try, for in­stance, the Unit­ed States. He not­ed that un­der the coun­try’s pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions, if the project ad­vances, it will have to fall un­der the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion.

Line Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith did not re­spond to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on the sta­tus of that cen­tre or why it has not dis­closed it to the pub­lic.

As con­cerns about da­ta cen­tres in T&T mount, Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings LLC founder Marc Far­rell said the com­pa­ny “was formed specif­i­cal­ly to pur­sue the Trinidad and To­ba­go op­por­tu­ni­ty”.

The com­pa­ny is in­cor­po­rat­ed in Delaware, Unit­ed States.

“While mem­bers of our con­sor­tium have been col­lab­o­rat­ing on AI in­fra­struc­ture and da­ta cen­tre projects for some time, the Trinidad op­por­tu­ni­ty it­self was on­ly con­ceived about a year ago, and the Delaware en­ti­ty was es­tab­lished ex­press­ly for that pur­pose,” he clar­i­fied on Fri­day.

Sev­er­al com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing For­tune 500 com­pa­nies such as Ama­zon and Al­pha­bet, are in­cor­po­rat­ed in Delaware be­cause of the state’s cor­po­ra­tion-friend­ly laws and tax ben­e­fits. The state does not re­quire the names of share­hold­ers or LLC mem­bers to be list­ed on pub­lic for­ma­tion doc­u­ments and does not im­pose cor­po­rate in­come tax on com­pa­nies that are formed there but con­duct busi­ness else­where.

For Far­rell, his pro­pos­al is for a large-scale AI in­fra­struc­ture cam­pus in T&T.

“The coun­try has a long his­to­ry of op­er­at­ing com­plex in­dus­tri­al and down­stream en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, sup­port­ed by a high­ly skilled en­gi­neer­ing and tech­ni­cal work­force and decades of ex­pe­ri­ence de­liv­er­ing mis­sion-crit­i­cal in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­i­ties. Com­bined with com­pet­i­tive ac­cess to nat­ur­al gas, glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive in­dus­tri­al elec­tric­i­ty costs, ro­bust sub­sea con­nec­tiv­i­ty in­to both North and South Amer­i­ca, and a grow­ing na­tion­al fo­cus on eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Trinidad pos­sess­es many of the in­gre­di­ents re­quired to sup­port next-gen­er­a­tion AI in­fra­struc­ture. Im­por­tant­ly, the op­por­tu­ni­ty ex­tends well be­yond the con­struc­tion of a da­ta cen­tre. If de­vel­oped suc­cess­ful­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go has the po­ten­tial to es­tab­lish it­self as an AI and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture hub serv­ing the wider Amer­i­c­as, cre­at­ing a plat­form for fu­ture in­vest­ment, in­no­va­tion and long-term eco­nom­ic growth,” he said in a note shared with Guardian Me­dia.

At the heart of AI and da­ta cen­tre in­vest­ment in the coun­try is its cheap elec­tric­i­ty.

T&TEC’s elec­tric­i­ty rates are the cheap­est in the re­gion. How­ev­er, the util­i­ty is ham­strung by its bil­lion-debt to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) for nat­ur­al gas, even as the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty means there is not enough nat­ur­al gas to meet the needs of the down­stream in­dus­tries.

Last Thurs­day, US Em­bassy Eco­nom­ic Of­fi­cer Jeff Cern­yar iden­ti­fied the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate as the pre­ferred lo­ca­tion for at least one cen­tre, with Debe al­so un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.

He said T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem al­ready has sub­stan­tial un­used gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

“Nor­mal­ly, if you talk about build­ing a da­ta cen­tre some­where, it’s a four-year project. But two of those years are meant to bring your elec­tri­cal grid up to the ca­pac­i­ty it needs to sup­ply the elec­tric­i­ty,” he had said.

“This is the first time I’ve served in a coun­try where there is ex­cess ca­pac­i­ty in gen­er­at­ing and trans­mis­sion on the grid. T&T has about a quar­ter of its gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty that is not used.”

Cern­yar had said that in­dus­tri­al es­tates such as Point Lisas pro­vide the ide­al en­vi­ron­ment for large-scale da­ta cen­tres be­cause they al­ready ac­com­mo­date heavy in­dus­try and are lo­cat­ed away from res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties, ad­dress­ing one of the main pub­lic con­cerns sur­round­ing the de­vel­op­ments.

“You’re ba­si­cal­ly con­vert­ing methane, nat­ur­al gas, in­to knowl­edge, in­to in­for­ma­tion. This is a defin­ing mo­ment. It’s a new in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, a knowl­edge rev­o­lu­tion, and T&T can be in the dri­ver’s seat as part of that, in part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed States,” he had said.

One source rea­soned that the fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge is that the project de­pends on at­tract­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers, yet those are ex­act­ly the or­gan­i­sa­tions that con­duct the most rig­or­ous tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial as­sess­ments.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s strongest sell­ing point is elec­tric­i­ty cost, but that alone is un­like­ly to out­weigh con­cerns about con­nec­tiv­i­ty, re­silience, op­er­at­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and long-term in­fra­struc­ture re­li­a­bil­i­ty.”

“Even cus­tomers whose com­put­ing work is less sen­si­tive to de­lays and who main­ly pri­ori­tise low op­er­at­ing costs can find com­pa­ra­ble or low­er elec­tric­i­ty prices in larg­er, bet­ter-con­nect­ed mar­kets that al­ready have mul­ti­ple in­ter­net routes, es­tab­lished op­er­a­tors and ma­ture da­ta cen­tre ecosys­tems. Those buy­ers there­fore have stronger rea­sons to choose those lo­ca­tions in­stead.”

Ac­cord­ing to in­dus­try in­sid­ers, a dili­gent as­sess­ment of any MOU rais­es con­cerns about es­tab­lish­ing Tier 4 da­ta cen­tres.

“When an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny choos­es where to place a da­ta cen­tre, the first ques­tions are al­ways: Will it stay on­line? Is the in­ter­net con­nec­tion re­li­able? Is there back­up if some­thing fails? Can the op­er­a­tor meet strict ser­vice guar­an­tees? Can the com­pa­ny com­ply with in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions? Cheap elec­tric­i­ty is on­ly a de­cid­ing fac­tor if all of those oth­er re­quire­ments have al­ready been met. On those more im­por­tant tests, Trinidad and To­ba­go falls short,” a source ex­plained.

Some of the fac­tors they iden­ti­fied are:

“The coun­try’s biggest weak­ness is con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Every in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­net ca­ble comes ashore at the same lo­ca­tion in Ch­aguara­mas. That cre­ates a sin­gle point of fail­ure. There is no ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly di­verse sec­ond path. If that land­ing sta­tion is dam­aged by an ac­ci­dent, equip­ment fail­ure or a ma­jor storm, the en­tire coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­net con­nec­tion can be dis­rupt­ed. Glob­al cus­tomers look­ing for high­ly re­silient in­fra­struc­ture gen­er­al­ly ex­pect mul­ti­ple, phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rate routes so that one in­ci­dent can­not take every­thing of­fline. Most in­ter­na­tion­al traf­fic has to pass through Puer­to Ri­co or Flori­da be­fore reach­ing the rest of the world. That means high­er de­lays in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and greater de­pen­dence on telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works (Dig­i­cel/Lib­er­ty) out­side the coun­try’s con­trol,” the source said.

An­oth­er source ex­plained that while low pow­er cost is its sin­gle ad­van­tage, it is both frag­ile and in­suf­fi­cient to off­set the rest.

The source rea­soned that the ar­gu­ment that T&T of­fers ex­cep­tion­al­ly cheap elec­tric­i­ty is al­so less se­cure than it ap­pears.

“Those low prices de­pend on sub­sidised nat­ur­al gas, yet the coun­try is fac­ing de­clin­ing gas pro­duc­tion. Sev­er­al ma­jor in­dus­tri­al fa­cil­i­ties have al­ready re­duced or sus­pend­ed op­er­a­tions be­cause of gas short­ages, and the gov­ern­ment is in­creas­ing­ly re­ly­ing on gas im­ports from Venezuela. That means any promise of low-cost elec­tric­i­ty over the next decade or more car­ries sig­nif­i­cant un­cer­tain­ty. Gov­ern­ments fac­ing lim­it­ed gas sup­plies will nat­u­ral­ly face pres­sure to de­cide where that gas should go. Elec­tric­i­ty prices that look at­trac­tive to­day can change if sub­si­dies are re­duced or if gas be­comes more valu­able in ex­port mar­kets. In­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers con­sid­er­ing in­vest­ments last­ing 10 or 15 years pay close at­ten­tion to that kind of risk,” the source ex­plained.

An in­dus­try in­sid­er not­ed that in the case of Hum­ming­bird, there is no track record of co­or­di­nat­ing or man­ag­ing a bil­lion-dol­lar project. The source said both cen­tres would in­cur sig­nif­i­cant con­sul­tant costs, and be­cause there is lit­tle pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion on the MOUs, there is no ex­pla­na­tion of who will cov­er the costs of nu­mer­ous stud­ies to be un­der­tak­en.
“For in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers mak­ing bil­lion-dol­lar tech­nol­o­gy de­ci­sions, an untest­ed op­er­a­tor rep­re­sents an ad­di­tion­al lay­er of de­liv­ery and op­er­a­tional risk. Large tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies usu­al­ly pre­fer fa­cil­i­ties run by or­gan­i­sa­tions with es­tab­lished records of com­plet­ing sim­i­lar projects on time, with­in bud­get and to in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised tech­ni­cal stan­dards. Build­ing a ma­jor ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tre for the first time is a very dif­fer­ent propo­si­tion from op­er­at­ing busi­ness­es in un­re­lat­ed in­dus­tries,” one source said.

“There are no mul­ti­ple, in­de­pen­dent da­ta cen­tre re­gions with­in the coun­try that cus­tomers can use as back­ups for one an­oth­er. If a com­pa­ny needs re­dun­dan­cy, mean­ing a sec­ond lo­ca­tion that can im­me­di­ate­ly take over if the first one fails, it would still have to place that back­up fa­cil­i­ty in an­oth­er coun­try.

“The coun­try al­so has rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle in­ter­net ex­change in­fra­struc­ture and lim­it­ed con­nec­tions to the world’s largest cloud com­put­ing providers. That means cus­tomers do not ben­e­fit from the net­work ad­van­tages that ex­ist in es­tab­lished da­ta cen­tre mar­kets,” one source ex­plained.

“Mod­ern ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence com­put­ing equip­ment pro­duces enor­mous amounts of heat and of­ten re­quires sig­nif­i­cant wa­ter re­sources un­less more ex­pen­sive cool­ing tech­nolo­gies are used. In a coun­try al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wa­ter short­ages, that rais­es ques­tions not on­ly about op­er­a­tional re­li­a­bil­i­ty but al­so about en­vi­ron­men­tal and po­lit­i­cal risks. Cus­tomers in­creas­ing­ly con­sid­er en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance is­sues when de­cid­ing where to in­vest. If a da­ta cen­tre be­comes as­so­ci­at­ed with wa­ter short­ages or pub­lic op­po­si­tion, that cre­ates rep­u­ta­tion­al risks that many com­pa­nies would rather avoid,” a source said.

“Many re­quire in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tions cov­er­ing in­for­ma­tion se­cu­ri­ty, op­er­a­tional re­silience and da­ta pro­tec­tion be­fore they will host sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion in a fa­cil­i­ty. Those cre­den­tials are still lim­it­ed in T&T com­pared with more es­tab­lished da­ta cen­tre mar­kets. De­pen­dence on gas sup­plies linked to Venezuela in­tro­duces an­oth­er lay­er of geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty. Large multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies gen­er­al­ly try to min­imise ex­po­sure to po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive sup­ply chains wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.”