Singapore-based company Firmus Technologies is building an Artificial Intelligence factory in Launceston, and says it now has a deal with Hydro Tasmania for energy.Speaking on Tasmania Mornings, chief executive Oliver Curtis say piles have gone in the ground and slab work starts next week.He says the company has signed an energy contract with Hydro Tasmania for 100 megawatts."So at this point in time, we are proud we've signed a very large energy contract with Hydro, but at the same time, we will be supporting the build out of new renewable projects," he says.Leon begins by asking him how the factory is progressing.CreditsLeon Compton, PresenterEliza Kloser, ProducerPenny McLeod, ProducerImage DetailsThe Firmus Technologies site in St Leonards, Launceston.(Supplied: Tasmanian government)Program:More from Tasmania MorningsLaunceston, Hobart, AITranscriptOliver CurtisWe are probably about 20 to 25 per cent of the way through. So piles are in the ground and slab work starts this week. So yeah, we're expecting delivery of the building and the project through Q4 this year.Leon ComptonSo as recently as October, November, December, this project could be up and running in St. Leonard's?Oliver CurtisThat's correct. Yeah, no, that's correct.Leon ComptonI had a go, Oliver, at describing what an AI processing plant is. I think you could probably do better. How do you describe to people who don't understand computers what this factory will actually do?Oliver CurtisNo, you actually described it pretty well there. We are in essence a factory. We produce a widget. That widget is what is referred to as an AI token. And so very similarly to aluminium or any commodity output, we take our input being electricity, we put it through the computers and we produce these tokens. The tokens are consumed globally. So in essence, as you mentioned, when you type into your cloud or chat GPT a question, an English word is broken down into tokens. So every three letters is about a token. Just last quarter, Google processed 1.48 quadrillion tokens. And these token consumption is doubling every two months. So these factories required to produce these, this commodity, these tokens are in very high demand and we happen to have one of the most cost effective and sustainable token production factories in the world.Leon ComptonOliver Curtis is our guest this morning, co-CEO of Firmus Technologies. Oliver, as recently as the last couple of days, the federal government have said more about their expectations for your sector. And a lot of this is built around how much power is required to generate these tokens. The power needs are enormous. Where is your power coming from to run this business in St. Leonard's?Oliver CurtisYeah, look, we're super proud of obviously the foundations of our business being started in Tasmania. Tasmania has fantastic natural resource base being the hydro assets and a vast amount of wind that's currently built. As your listeners would understand, there's an immense amount of investment into new generation that is required for Marinus Link. And at the moment, Tasmania exports a lot of energy back up into the mainland. We are definitely on board with the federal government and frankly, this is a state government position that the consumption of energy that we use, we will be supporting the build out of new renewable projects on island to assist in the displacement of what we do use. So at this point in time, we are proud we've signed a very large energy contract with hydro, but at the same time, we will be supporting the build out of new renewable projects. We require, as you mentioned, quite a large amount of energy, albeit it's requisite to the investment that we're making. This investment is about six to seven billion Australian dollars into Launceston. And so we require about 100 megawatts of energy to power that factory. That contract has been signed with Aurora, which is allowing us to generate this economic output, which is the token. We don't buy electricity directly from the market. We're not a wholesale market participant, so we buy it through a retailer. But it's in essence, energy that's being produced that would otherwise be being exported back up into the mainland. We're using it, which is a state of government policy around the use of hydro's energy assets to support new industry and creation of jobs.Leon ComptonRight, so how much power have you secured exactly under contract?Oliver CurtisRight now we've got 100 megawatts under contract. Appears In MorningsDuration: 2 hours 29 minutes 59 seconds2h 29m1 itemsIn this episode1 of 1PlayingCompany behind Launceston AI factory signs energy contract with HydroDuration: 4 minutes 10 seconds4m 10s