An Amsterdam-based tech company plans to build two “A.I. factories” in Schuylkill County.
In the North Schuylkill High School cafeteria recently, Nebius AI representatives presented it as an upfront company that shares its plans with the community and asks for feedback — unlike other data center developments which tend to shield their plans from the community and sign nondisclosure agreements with clients.
"I think there's a lot of companies in our space, our industry that have not done a good job … of engaging,” vice president of public affairs John Sutter said. “We want to say there's a better way that we can do this as a company. But quite frankly, there's a better way that this whole industry, I think, as a whole, can do a better job in terms of building.”
Nebius purchased land for $187.5 million in Butler Twp. in the Highridge Industrial Park from NorthPoint Development. The property is in the township’s industrial zone and under its data center overlay.
The area is already zoned for data centers so Nebius does not need zoning permission, like some data center projects in other Northeast and Northcentral Pennsylvania communities.
Nebius plans to build on 600 acres next to a Walmart Distribution Center, FCI Schuylkill and Pennsylvania State Game Lands near Interstate 81 and Gordon Mountain Road.
Plans for the land include a one story data hall and a two story data hall. If the township extends the data center overlay to the neighboring property, Nebius will construct two more single story data halls.
Sutter said overall the company will make a $13 billion to 15 billion capital investment into Schuylkill County. He also said the project will provide 1,000 construction jobs and 100 to 150 full-time jobs.
"If there's one thing that you remember from tonight, one thing, I hope it's that you all remember that we're different," he told the crowd of around 50. "We're a company that's here that designs responsibly. That builds responsibly. And that's here to to be a partner with this community and to build with you all.”
Residents' concerns
Despite the company’s openness, residents still had concerns about the number of jobs, environmental safeguards and water usage during the open house.
Linda Butensky lives in Schuylkill Haven. She went to the meeting to learn why the project needs 600 acres of land.
"How much AI do we need? How much do we want? And the ultimate question is, how is it eventually going to be used, for or against us?,” she said.
Butensky is worried about how the industry could change residents’ quality of life
"That's one of my concerns, but no one's going to give us any good answers to know if it will or not until it's too late," she said.
Ellie Siegfried, from Orwigsburg, worries that the industry will eventually “go bust.”
"It's going wild with no controls,” she said.
What is Nebius?
Arkady Volozh, a Kazakhstan-born billionaire who lives in Israel, founded the tech company Yandex in Russia.
He would eventually sell-off the Russian holdings of Yandex and in 2024 reorganized to form Nebius.
In February, Volozh renounced his Russian citizenship.
The name comes from the latin word Nebula, which means cloud; and the mathematical Möbius strip.
Sutter described Nebius as an “AI cloud company.”
"We provide the infrastructure and the software that allows artificial intelligence to happen,” he said.
Nebius calls their facilities “AI factories” instead of data centers because customers “come to us … they look for the capacity that we have in order to run their models, in order to run the work,” he said.
“We're really manufacturing intelligence within these AI factories,” he said.
The company is publicly traded. In the United States, Nebius has or is building facilities in New Jersey, Kansas City, Missouri, Oklahoma City, and Birmingham, Alabama.
Water plans and concerns
Sutter said when deciding where to place a center, Nebius looks for sites that are appropriately zoned, has access to power and is ready to build on.
Nebius’ 1.2 gigawatt facility in Schuylkill County is designed to minimize water usage through a closed-loop system that uses recycled water, Sutter said.
"It's filled once with water, and then that water stays in a welded shut pipe system that cools our chips. We don't have to refill it. We don't have to have a daily intake of millions of gallons a day," he said.
He said they will dig a well and will connect to a public water main for toilets, sinks and kitchens. Water usage will be similar to an office building, Sutter said.
The water to the facility is not what concerns Gordon resident Joe Marko, but rather the runoff from the overall development.
Marko lives at the bottom of Gordon Mountain 1.3 miles from where the data center will be built. His home is nowhere near water, so Marko said flood insurance is not an option. Plus, it’s expensive.
"They ... took out a state game land of trees, stripped it flat, and they're putting in so much impervious surface. The retention ponds they have, it's questionable if it can handle it," he said at the open house.
Sutter said plans for the site do include those stormwater retention ponds. The entire 600 acres will not be built on, since there are wetlands on the property.
Paying for power
As for electricity, Sutter said one of the reasons the company chose the site was its close proximity to PPL Electric Utilities’ power lines that run along Interstate 81.
He said they will pay their fair share for power.
"That means any type of infrastructure upgrade, any type of infrastructure improvements, we're bearing that cost in order to to serve our site," he said.
Plans do include an electrical switchyard and substation on the campus, but Sutter said there is no expectation that additional power lines will need to be built to feed the site.
He also added that they signed President Donald Trump’s ratepayer protection pledge, which asks hyperscalers and AI companies to build, bring or buy all of the energy needed for building and operating data centers and pay for full cost of their energy and infrastructure.
Unlike many data centers, which must run 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, Nebius can shut down, Sutter said.
Each building will only have two backup generators.
"We use these generators … to shut down the facility in the event of a power outage. So because we only do AI workloads, we don't have the same needs as a cloud storage or a typical, maybe traditional data center," he said.
Nebius is used for AI training and running AI models.
"If those chips turn off, it's just like the last line of code, and then it just picks back up and continues going from where it started,” Sutter said.
A start-up in the United Kingdom uses one of their platforms for Alzheimer's research, Sutter said.
"So that work is something that could be paused and wouldn't have an interruption to Google Maps or to the NYSE trading going down or to the American Airlines you know system keeping the planes in the air,” he said.
Data centers can be noisy.
Plans show that sound walls and buffering technology will be added to minimize noise if necessary. The project will also operate at or below Butler Twp.’s applicable noise ordinance requirements.
'Is this the right thing for my township?'
Sutter stressed to the community that Neibus will provide funding for local education, including for K to 12 AI literacy, trade school programs, apprenticeships, higher education partnerships and towards workforce development.
Online plans say that Nebius will contribute tens of millions of dollars in corporate, local and state taxes over the next five years.
Sutter said they don’t sign nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), which many data center developers use to hide behind when questioned on who will be the end user of their campuses.
"We're the developer of the site. We're building the site, and we're the tenant, and we're going to own and operate the site. It's going to be our name on the building, and then of course it means that we're here to be a partner,” he said.
Sutter said he asks people to evaluate the company based on their business model.
"Not based on what they see scrolling on Facebook or on TikTok. There's a lot of chatter. There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of fear around 'Oh, a data center is coming'," he said. "Take a look at our project. Take a look at our site, and then then then decide, is this the right thing for my township?”
