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Meanwhile in Australia we have a "AI data centre" startup being valued at $1.9 billion and given $330 million to play with, having not built anything yet. It's

Meanwhile in Australia we have a "AI data centre" startup being valued at $1.9 billion and given $330 million to play with, having not built anything yet. It's co-founded by a guy that went to prison for insider trading. His wife is also an investor, who happens to be a prominent Australian influencer. The company previously focused on Bitcoin mining but have pivoted to the AI boom, claiming their cooling systems to be 60% better than competitors. Their first project will kick off soon in the Australian state of Tasmania, where there is nothing much more than sheep and tourists. https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/firmus-raises-330-million-build-ai-factory-tasmania-1-9-billion-valuation/ https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/firmus-raises-3...

pkaye 1y ago
Is there a lot of power generation in Tasmania? That is the main criteria for AI data centers from what I heard. Latency is less critical than cost of power.
- matt_daemon 1y ago
  Plenty of power and it’s almost always renewable: https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/tas1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed&show=curtailment_wind https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/tas1/?range=7d... There’s also plenty more there than sheep and tourists (and not really that many of those)
  - decimalenough 1y ago
    There's pretty national parks, convict history and some pretty tasty whiskeys and wines, but not a whole lot of reasons to build a data centre. The power argument isn't particularly compelling either, because it's much more sunny on the Australian mainland.
    - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
      > The power argument isn't particularly compelling either, because it's much more sunny on the Australian mainland. But the vast majority of Tasmania's power is hydroelectric. Hydro is a much more desirable renewable than solar because it essentially is its own built in battery.
  - hsjsjdnbdbdb 1y ago
    Might need to fact check yourself there mate. Tasmania has issues with enough power for some industries. There was a factory that could not get enough power to a planned upgrade. God knows how a datacentre would do down there....
bdangubic 1y ago
> where there is nothing much more than sheep and tourists kind of like Mississippi but without the tourists part
- greenie_beans 1y ago
  people have the weirdest/wrong perceptions of mississippi
  - pixl97 1y ago
    It's more like "it's like the US, but without the education"
    - greenie_beans 1y ago
      punching down on a state you don't understand or know anything about is such a overdone trope. at least be funny!
      - cowboylowrez 1y ago
        ok how bout this, its all relative except for mississippi, there's too much going on between relatives there. get it? hahahaha
        greenie_beans 1y ago
        unfortunate life you must live to be so unfunny
        cowboylowrez 1y ago
        oooh look who's punching down now haha yes sir, I have an extremely unfortunate life, I'm the sort of individual who does not have good luck. I try not to bring it up because its simply not on topic for hn, me circling the drain is really nobody's business but mine and the drain, oh yeah, yours too I guess. questions?
Hansappreciator 1y ago
Signs of a bubble in this sector are everywhere. OpenAI is trying to fundraise a $5tn infrastructure buildout on $15bn in annual revenue. That's insane. What's worse is that OpenAI and the other AI companies are all intertwined. The chipmakers are invested in the datacenter operators are invested in the software guys. When the bubble implodes - and it will implode - the good will go down with the bad, and that's what makes a financial crash a true crash.
- bob1029 1y ago
  The AMD/OpenAI deal sounded like the music stopping to me.
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    That and the 3-way "OpenAI pays Oracle $300B in cloud computing on their $15B of revenue", "Oracle buys $40B of NVidia chips for their new datacenter", "NVidia invests $100B in OpenAI". The money's just moving around and around, propping up revenue numbers for Wall Street, but the consumer benefits are dubious. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/openai-nvidia-amd-deals-risks-rcna234806 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/openai-nvidia-amd-d...
    - Panzer04 1y ago
      If the money is leaving the system slow enough (via Employee wages and materials for chip manufacturing) I suppose it can go on for quite some time.
      - munk-a 1y ago
        Sure - but nothing driving up revenue value is actually being created[1]. What's missing in that system is a way that money is entering the system. These deals are (in my cynical opinion at least) being inked to create the appearance of large continued investment and market excitement to pump or sustain valuations. Oracle actually spotlit the arrangement as future sales in their recent earnings and that seemed to be what mostly drove their valuation up. Performative actions to drive up valuation and try and attract more investors absolutely feels bubbly to me. 1. Discounting products that are not only currently operating at a loss but are priced well below actual resourcing required to produce.
theteapot 1y ago
Tasmania doesn't do much sheep farming. They are more into salmon. Maybe you were making a derogatory reference to the local human population? Fair enough.
- combyn8tor 1y ago
  Tasmania has 38 sheep per square kilometer and is only surpassed by Victoria with 60 sheep km2. WA has 4 sheep per km2, QLD 1.44, SA 10, NSW 3. In population terms, Tasmania has 4.5 sheep per person, whereas Victoria has 1.9 sheep per person. NSW 0.28, SA 5.2, WA 3.3, QLD 0.4 [1] https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/dimensions/area-of-australia-states-and-territories https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-in... [2] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national... [3] https://www.wool.com/market-intelligence/sheep-numbers-by-state/ https://www.wool.com/market-intelligence/sheep-numbers-by-st... * Population numbers are one head per person, so actual numbers may vary for Tasmania ;-)
  - xrd 1y ago
    Please keep arguing about this, it is relieving a lot of stress to watch this. There have to be more facts than just that. I'm serious. This helps me take focus off the rest of the world burning. I'm serious.
    - taskforcegemini 1y ago
      Understandable, it's counting sheep after all.
  - bix6 1y ago
    What are the salmon numbers?
    - ggm 1y ago
      They rise and fall as the orange bellied parrots fly over, salmon leaping to catch the parrots is a sight to behold. I better get my maugean skates on...
gonzo41 1y ago
So the real risk with that data center is the fact that Tasmania is a culdesac on the internet. We have three fiber cables coming to the island, all from Victoria (directly to the north). The whole state has lost internet before due to someone in Victoria digging a trench through the cable (yes a silly mistake but we're all humans). It's not a bad idea to put data centers here, but we really need a few more links out to the world from here.
- ggm 1y ago
  Where would you send them to achieve useful path diversity?
  - gonzo41 1y ago
    Adelaide, Sydney and New Zealand. https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/bass-strait-1 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/bass-strai...
fuzzfactor 1y ago
Regardless of a bubble or not, don't some operators do exceptionally well financially, without a lot of recognition, when things are murky compared to transparent or having clarity? And how long has this kind of thing probably been going on?

pkaye 1y ago

Is there a lot of power generation in Tasmania? That is the main criteria for AI data centers from what I heard. Latency is less critical than cost of power.

matt_daemon 1y ago
Plenty of power and it’s almost always renewable: https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/tas1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed&show=curtailment_wind https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/tas1/?range=7d... There’s also plenty more there than sheep and tourists (and not really that many of those)
- decimalenough 1y ago
  There's pretty national parks, convict history and some pretty tasty whiskeys and wines, but not a whole lot of reasons to build a data centre. The power argument isn't particularly compelling either, because it's much more sunny on the Australian mainland.
  - hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    > The power argument isn't particularly compelling either, because it's much more sunny on the Australian mainland. But the vast majority of Tasmania's power is hydroelectric. Hydro is a much more desirable renewable than solar because it essentially is its own built in battery.
- hsjsjdnbdbdb 1y ago
  Might need to fact check yourself there mate. Tasmania has issues with enough power for some industries. There was a factory that could not get enough power to a planned upgrade. God knows how a datacentre would do down there....

bdangubic 1y ago

> where there is nothing much more than sheep and tourists kind of like Mississippi but without the tourists part

greenie_beans 1y ago
people have the weirdest/wrong perceptions of mississippi
- pixl97 1y ago
  It's more like "it's like the US, but without the education"
  - greenie_beans 1y ago
    punching down on a state you don't understand or know anything about is such a overdone trope. at least be funny!
    - cowboylowrez 1y ago
      ok how bout this, its all relative except for mississippi, there's too much going on between relatives there. get it? hahahaha
      - greenie_beans 1y ago
        unfortunate life you must live to be so unfunny
        cowboylowrez 1y ago
        oooh look who's punching down now haha yes sir, I have an extremely unfortunate life, I'm the sort of individual who does not have good luck. I try not to bring it up because its simply not on topic for hn, me circling the drain is really nobody's business but mine and the drain, oh yeah, yours too I guess. questions?

Hansappreciator 1y ago

Signs of a bubble in this sector are everywhere. OpenAI is trying to fundraise a $5tn infrastructure buildout on $15bn in annual revenue. That's insane. What's worse is that OpenAI and the other AI companies are all intertwined. The chipmakers are invested in the datacenter operators are invested in the software guys. When the bubble implodes - and it will implode - the good will go down with the bad, and that's what makes a financial crash a true crash.

bob1029 1y ago
The AMD/OpenAI deal sounded like the music stopping to me.
- nostrademons 1y ago
  That and the 3-way "OpenAI pays Oracle $300B in cloud computing on their $15B of revenue", "Oracle buys $40B of NVidia chips for their new datacenter", "NVidia invests $100B in OpenAI". The money's just moving around and around, propping up revenue numbers for Wall Street, but the consumer benefits are dubious. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/openai-nvidia-amd-deals-risks-rcna234806 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/openai-nvidia-amd-d...
  - Panzer04 1y ago
    If the money is leaving the system slow enough (via Employee wages and materials for chip manufacturing) I suppose it can go on for quite some time.
    - munk-a 1y ago
      Sure - but nothing driving up revenue value is actually being created[1]. What's missing in that system is a way that money is entering the system. These deals are (in my cynical opinion at least) being inked to create the appearance of large continued investment and market excitement to pump or sustain valuations. Oracle actually spotlit the arrangement as future sales in their recent earnings and that seemed to be what mostly drove their valuation up. Performative actions to drive up valuation and try and attract more investors absolutely feels bubbly to me. 1. Discounting products that are not only currently operating at a loss but are priced well below actual resourcing required to produce.

theteapot 1y ago

Tasmania doesn't do much sheep farming. They are more into salmon. Maybe you were making a derogatory reference to the local human population? Fair enough.

combyn8tor 1y ago
Tasmania has 38 sheep per square kilometer and is only surpassed by Victoria with 60 sheep km2. WA has 4 sheep per km2, QLD 1.44, SA 10, NSW 3. In population terms, Tasmania has 4.5 sheep per person, whereas Victoria has 1.9 sheep per person. NSW 0.28, SA 5.2, WA 3.3, QLD 0.4 [1] https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/dimensions/area-of-australia-states-and-territories https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-in... [2] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national... [3] https://www.wool.com/market-intelligence/sheep-numbers-by-state/ https://www.wool.com/market-intelligence/sheep-numbers-by-st... * Population numbers are one head per person, so actual numbers may vary for Tasmania ;-)
- xrd 1y ago
  Please keep arguing about this, it is relieving a lot of stress to watch this. There have to be more facts than just that. I'm serious. This helps me take focus off the rest of the world burning. I'm serious.
  - taskforcegemini 1y ago
    Understandable, it's counting sheep after all.
- bix6 1y ago
  What are the salmon numbers?
  - ggm 1y ago
    They rise and fall as the orange bellied parrots fly over, salmon leaping to catch the parrots is a sight to behold. I better get my maugean skates on...

gonzo41 1y ago

So the real risk with that data center is the fact that Tasmania is a culdesac on the internet. We have three fiber cables coming to the island, all from Victoria (directly to the north). The whole state has lost internet before due to someone in Victoria digging a trench through the cable (yes a silly mistake but we're all humans). It's not a bad idea to put data centers here, but we really need a few more links out to the world from here.

ggm 1y ago
Where would you send them to achieve useful path diversity?
- gonzo41 1y ago
  Adelaide, Sydney and New Zealand. https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/bass-strait-1 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/bass-strai...

fuzzfactor 1y ago

Regardless of a bubble or not, don't some operators do exceptionally well financially, without a lot of recognition, when things are murky compared to transparent or having clarity? And how long has this kind of thing probably been going on?