Nebius Says, “Ask Us Anything.” But There’s a Lot They’re Not Telling You.

Nebius is running online ads that invite Birmingham residents to “Ask us anything” about its AI Mega Factory in Oxmoor Valley.

The ads lead you to a page of questions and answers on the foreign-owned company’s website.

We read every answer.

Some contradict others on the same page. But the most important facts never appear at all.

It’s as if they don’t want you to know the real answers.

The $3.2 billion question

Nebius asks itself, “Are you requesting a tax abatement, and what approvals will you need?”

Its answer never gives the size of the abatement.

The Industrial Development Board approved $3.234 billion in tax breaks for Nebius over 30 years, at a Friday special meeting held at the Birmingham Business Alliance’s offices. That decision is now the subject of a taxpayer lawsuit.

Do the math using Nebius’ own numbers.

The page says the AI Mega Factory will generate about $85.7 million a year in taxes. Over 30 years, that comes to about $2.57 billion.

But the abatement exceeds the tax Nebius would pay over those 30 years by more than $600 million.

The second half of the question, what approvals Nebius still needs, goes completely unanswered.

The schools money shrank

Nebius once told Birmingham its AI Mega Factory would produce about $88 million a year for local schools.

The page now says about $48 million a year in education taxes. That’s 45% less than their original claim.

Either the schools number fell by nearly half or Nebius changed what it counts. It is the fourth answer Nebius has given to this simple question.

The hearings Nebius promised never came

Under the banner “Show up before we break ground,” Nebius’ own timeline lists “Secure permits” and “Anticipated public and community hearings” in the same quarter, the first quarter of 2026.

It’s now the fourth quarter and no such public hearings have been held. Not one.

They secured the permits, all right. They got them before the Zoning Board of Adjustment ever even heard the case.

The Zoning Board of Adjustment denied the special exceptions Nebius needed for its substation and switching station.

But construction proceeded anyway.

That is the heart of the class action lawsuit residents filed in May.

The same page still says, “We are in the planning stages for this AI factory and welcome community feedback.”

Yet, its own timeline says construction began in the second quarter of 2026 and energization comes in the fourth quarter.

The fourth quarter began October 1.

The project fact sheet linked from the page still says Nebius “is considering developing” an AI factory and is “evaluating the site,” but we are way past that point. Hoar Construction is well underway.

300 megawatts, and not a word about it

The AI Mega Factory is a 300 MW facility.

It would consume roughly 2.6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, more than double the residential electricity use of the entire City of Birmingham.

Neither figure appears anywhere on the page.

The fact sheet calls the project “Nebius’ flagship U.S. AI factory” and promises “targeted, optimized power use,” whatever that means.

The FAQ says a new “switching and substation” will “generate power.” A substation generates nothing.

The answer then refers to “this new (power) generation coming online” without naming any power plant or source.

The promise that residential rates won’t rise rests entirely on a single line: “APCO has confirmed.” The page links to no agreement or regulatory document.

A new state law keeps Alabama Power’s retail base rates from rising before January 1, 2029. It covers base rates only, and it ends in a little over two years.

The tax abatement runs 30 years.

A second new law, which took effect October 1, sets standards for approving power contracts for large data centers, including that the data center pay the added costs of serving it. But Nebius insists it is not governed by that law.

Noise, 200 feet from an animal welfare campus

Nebius’ “Answers” page cites a sound study by Affiliated Engineers, Inc. but doesn’t link to it. The Greater Birmingham Humane Society has examined that study, and it does not take into account the frequencies animals hear.

The page promises the facility “will meet all local noise ordinances governing the commercial district.” The neighbors are not a commercial district. They are homes, an elementary school, and the GBHS animal welfare campus, about 200 feet away.

Nothing on the page addresses continuous low-frequency hum. That is exactly the concern GBHS’s chief executive has raised.

“Ultra Quiet fans” is a product marketing phrase, not a scientific measurement.

The generators Nebius didn’t mention

The page says the facility is “expected to be a minor source of air emissions.” Emissions from what?

The page never says.

Nebius has told reporters it plans to run 32 temporary generators, which can burn natural gas or diesel, during commissioning.

It also plans four 3-megawatt backup diesel generators, each with about 24,000 gallons of diesel storage. That’s 96,000 gallons of fuel on site.

Not a drop of it is to be found on the “Ask us anything” page.

A billion Btu an hour

A 300 MW AI Mega Factory discharges about a billion Btu of heat an hour, around the clock.

That’s enough heat to turn Vulcan into molten iron in two-and-a-half minutes.

But the Nebius web page says nothing about heat. Or the constant electromagnetic radiation that can disorient birds and bats.

Water without numbers

At the top of the page, Nebius credits “an innovative closed-loop cooling system design.”

But even Nebius’ own FAQ backs away from that, promising “closed-loop or other similarly low-consumption cooling systems.” (Emphasis added)

That is a troubling hedge.

Hyperscale data centers have often promised communities lowball water numbers, only to use vastly more. In Fayetteville, Georgia (to cite but one example), a QTS data center even made unauthorized draws on the city’s water supply.

This late in construction, the FAQ says, “final numbers will depend on detailed engineering.”

If the AI Mega Factory is to be energized this quarter, as Nebius says it will, shouldn’t there be detailed engineering drawings, signed by professionals, by now?

If so, when is the public allowed to see them?

Nebius measures its water use against “a quarter of what the former Regions building consumed,” a building it describes as vacant when it bought it. It never says what year, what volume, or how many gallons.

The day Nebius bought it, the empty building was using practically no water. Is that what they are comparing their usage to? They never say.

Nebius promises no “fluid discharge into sewer system or environment.”

But the very next line promises “close coordination with Jefferson County Sewer District for planning and system upgrades.”

If the only thing going into the sewer is restroom wastewater from 78 permanent employees, what needs upgrading?

78 permanent jobs

The top of the page promises “1,000+ skilled construction jobs.” The FAQ on the same page says “hundreds.”

The page never mentions the number of permanent jobs Nebius told the Industrial Development Board to expect: a paltry 78.

That’s less than one job per acre—an astonishingly low number.

Almost any other kind of development—for example the kind actually permitted under the zoning laws—would put hundreds or even thousands of people to work on a site that size.

The previous facility, occupying a small fraction of the 79 acres, employed 800 people. More than 10 times the jobs to be had at the AI Mega Factory.

Five lawsuits and a land deal

The page mentions none of the five lawsuits Nebius faces.

Residents have filed a class action over zoning.

Robert and Gail Sansome have a separate suit against Nebius, the City of Birmingham, and Hoar Construction, set for trial March 8, 2027.

GBHS has filed suit over the permits.

A former Birmingham school board member has sued to void the abatement.

A Regions Bank shareholder has filed a derivative suit over the sale of the land. That suit demonstrates how the property went from $17.2 million to $27 million to $83.5 million in a single day.

Who benefits

The FAQ’s examples of the supposed good the facility will do—a purely hypothetical Alzheimer’s breakthrough and “biotech startups” running on Nebius’ cloud—come from Nebius’ own blog.

To put it mildly, the page is short on real-world benefits.

The fact sheet says Nebius will “deploy its existing education platforms,” Nebius Academy and TripleTen.

Those are Nebius’ own commercial education businesses.

Any benefit they might provide cannot begin to compare to the harsh conditions they will impose on a quiet, serene neighborhood that includes an elementary school.

The page touts a Community Engagement Panel. It lists no members, no schedule, and no minutes.

Nebius says it ran a community survey. It has not published any of the results.

Questions Nebius must answer

After you’ve waded through the self-contradictions and empty puff phrases on Nebius’ website, you’re likely to be left with a lot of important questions. Among them:

• WHY did the public and community hearings you promised never happen?
• WHICH is it for Birmingham’s schools, $88 million a year or $48 million?
• WHAT document backs your promise that residential rates won’t rise?
• WILL YOU publish your sound study, and did it measure what animals hear?
• HOW MUCH water will you use, in gallons per day at full build-out?
• WHAT approvals do you still need?

Birmingham and the Oxmoor Valley neighborhood deserve answers.

But, judging by their ad campaign, we’re not going to get them from Nebius.