How FEED fits Vermont
FEED adds no net-new energy or water footprint in Vermont.
FEED is a lightweight app that runs on managed cloud infrastructure that already exists. It doesn't build new power- or water-hungry facilities here. This page is our honest accounting of how that works — and where the edges of that claim are.
The honest version
We run on infrastructure that already exists.
FEED is software, not a building. There is no FEED data center in Vermont — no new server halls drawing megawatts off the grid, no new cooling towers drawing down local water. The app runs on shared, managed cloud services that were already built and already running, the same way your bank's app or your email does.
That is the whole claim, stated plainly: FEED adds no net-new Vermont energy or water footprint. It does not mean FEED uses zero electricity anywhere — every app uses some. It means FEED is not the kind of project that puts a new, industrial-scale load on Vermont's grid or watershed.
FEED is a Vermont nonprofit in formation, built to run here first.
Where the AI runs
One AI provider: Fireworks AI.
FEED's AI features run on a single provider — Fireworks AI. There is no second AI vendor, and no model running on hardware we operate in Vermont. Fireworks runs the models on its own managed infrastructure, and FEED calls it like any other cloud service.
Fireworks holds independent security and privacy certifications — SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and ISO 27001, 27701, and 42001. Those certifications belong to Fireworks, the provider. They are not FEED's certifications. We rely on them; we do not claim them as our own.
Per Fireworks' published policy, prompts sent for inference are not retained. We state that as their policy — because that is what it is: a commitment published by Fireworks, not something enforced inside FEED's own code.
Certifications above are held by Fireworks AI, FEED's inference provider — not by FEED.
Your information stays yours
Your vault is zero-knowledge.
The sensitive things you keep in FEED — documents, answers, personal details — are encrypted on your device before they are ever sent anywhere. You hold the only key. No one, including us, can open your vault without your master password. This part is not a provider's promise: it is how FEED's own code works.
(Keep your master password somewhere safe: if you lose it, even we cannot recover it.)
The short contrast
What a data center does — and what FEED does not.
A hyperscale data center
Draws large, continuous amounts of grid power, uses significant water for cooling, and is a physical industrial facility. At that scale, new demand can push up costs for the ratepayers around it.
FEED
Is a phone and web app. It runs on shared cloud capacity that already exists, builds no facility in Vermont, and adds no new local power or water draw of its own.
That is the brief, factual version. The fuller case for how communities can weigh a data-center proposal lives on a separate site — the Vermont Datacenter Toolkit.
Weighing a data center in your town?
FEED's footprint story is one small piece. If your community is facing a data-center proposal, the Vermont Datacenter Toolkit gathers the questions, numbers, and rights you can use.