One library, two restaurants and a ‘firmly worded’ letter: Firmus digs in amid soaring community backlash
After spending much of the year courting the world’s largest investors ahead of a blockbuster IPO, Firmus co-founder Oliver Curtis is being increasingly pulled into less glamourous conversations.
For a company with such lofty ambitions, Firmus has been in the weeds lately.
The AI data centre business has recently deepened its relationship with the world’s most valuable company, Nvidia, secured a massive energy supply deal with global commodities trading house Gunvor Group, and may or may not be on track for the local market’s biggest IPO of the year.
But co-founders and co-CEOs Oliver Curtis and Tim Rosenfield have also found themselves on the ground in the rural towns of Brinkworth, South Australia (population circa 250), and George Town, Tasmania, fighting their corner.
Community pressure is clearly mounting.
“Tasmanians are increasingly taken aback by these data centres popping up here, when they’ve only learnt about it through council development applications, or when construction has already begun”, Greens MP Tabatha Badger told Capital Brief.
