# Forgelight Ventures, LLC Forgelight Ventures, LLC is the developer of the announced Conway data-center project — "the Company" in the April 1, 2025 memorandum of understanding with the [[City of Conway]], [[Conway Corporation]], and the Conway Foundation. The Arkansas Secretary of State registry shows it is a Delaware shell limited liability company; its organizer of record is [[Michael Montfort]], whom news reporting ties to a parallel Arkansas data-center project reported to be Google's. ## Corporate registration The Arkansas Secretary of State business registry (primary public record, [Forgelight Ventures LLC entity record](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/sos-corp-search.ark.org/forgelight-ventures-llc-sos-record.md)) shows: - **Forgelight Ventures LLC is a Delaware limited liability company** ("State of Origin: DE"), registered to transact business in Arkansas as a Foreign LLC on **2025-02-11** — about seven weeks before the Conway City Council approved the project MOU. - Arkansas filing # **811535239**; status **Good Standing**. - Registered agent: **Corporation Service Company**, a national commercial registered-agent service (300 S. Spring St., Little Rock). - The Delaware address of record is a private mailbox ("PMB 160," 2801 Centerville Road, Wilmington). No principal place of business and no corporate parent are disclosed. - The only natural person named is **[[Michael Montfort]]**, listed as Incorporator/Organizer and as Manager. ## Roles in this corpus - **Developer / MOU counterparty.** The MOU describes Forgelight Ventures as "evaluating the City of Conway ... for a prospective site" for "an approximately 300,000 square foot data center building," ancillary buildings, and infrastructure, with an anticipated investment of "approximately $1,000,000,000" and "approximately 50 new high-quality jobs," expandable to additional data-center buildings (primary public record, [April 1, 2025 council agenda packet](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/media.conwayarkansas.gov/april-1-2025-special-city-council-agenda.md)). Forgelight Ventures is one of four signatories to the MOU. ## People - [[Michael Montfort]] — Incorporator/Organizer and Manager of record. ## Notes Anchors the former "ForgeLight Ventures LLC" entity seed. The MOU body styles the entity "Forgelight Ventures, LLC"; the signature block and the Arkansas registry render it "FORGELIGHT VENTURES LLC." **Who is behind Forgelight Ventures — unidentified on the existing record.** Forgelight Ventures is a single-purpose Delaware shell — a commercial registered agent, a private-mailbox address, no disclosed parent. The corpus cannot, from primary records alone, name the company behind it. The strongest secondary-source lead is via its organizer [[Michael Montfort]]: *Data Center Dynamics* reported on 2026-05-21 that Montfort is also the incorporator of [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]], the applicant for a $1 billion Port of Little Rock data center that the *Arkansas Democrat-Gazette* reported — citing two unnamed sources — is Google's (web research 2026-05-22, [DCD report](../../web%20archive/2026-05-22/www.datacenterdynamics.com/google-behind-1bn-data-center-in-little-rock-arkansas-report.md)). The Arkansas registry shows Forgelight Ventures and Willowbend Capital are twin filings — registered the same day (2025-02-11), with the same registered agent, the same Delaware private-mailbox address, and near-consecutive filing numbers (811535239 and 811535247). However, per [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend|T003]] and [[D003 Synthesis]] (2026-05-24, verdict: `resolved-via-D003` asymmetric), the wiki applies the [[Identifying the Unnamed Cooling-Water Data Centers]] restraint precedent to Forgelight: **six of the seven "fingerprint" dimensions are largely artifacts of a shared commercial registry-vendor stack** (Corporation Service Company handles hundreds of thousands of LLCs; PMB 160 is a mass-mailbox forwarder shared by thousands of unrelated entities; near-consecutive filing numbers reflect same-day batch submission). *DCD* itself "**does not assert that Google is behind the Conway / Forgelight project**"; the Conway developer remains officially "a US-based Fortune 100 company." Per the dialectical record, naming Google (or any other entity) on the present record would violate the wiki's restraint standard; the Conway principal is unidentified. The structural correspondence with [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] is documented but is not, on the present record, identification. See [[The Conway Data Center Project]] and [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend]] for the full dialectical analysis. ## Updated by the 2026-05-26 City of Conway production The [[2026-05 City of Conway Produces Project Stratus Records|City of Conway FOIA-2026-126 production]] of May 26, 2026 added the following Tier-1 anchors: - **"Project Stratus" is Forgelight's project codename**, confirmed by the [[City of Conway FOIA-2026-126 Cover and No-Response Letter|Mayor's Office cover letter]] for FOIA-2026-129 dated May 20, 2026, which uses the formal subject line "Proposed Conway Data Center | Project Stratus | Forgelight Ventures." See [[Project Stratus]]. - **The site location closes** at the NE corner of Lollie Rd and Donnell Ridge Rd, the 160-acre Adams Property (N½ and S½ NE¼ of Section 30, T5N R14W, Faulkner County) — rezoned A-1 to I-3 by [[Rezone Ordinance O-25-39 and REZ-0425-0052|Ordinance O-25-39]] on April 22, 2025. The adjacent 296.21 acres in Sections 19 and 20 were annexed by [[Annexation Ordinance O-25-37 (Lollie Rd)|O-25-37]] and zoned I-3 by default. - **1-gigawatt build-out design**, per the staff-authored [[April 2026 FAQ Project Stratus|April 2026 FAQ]] Q13: "The data center site is designed for up to 1 gigawatt of power." Matches the AVAIO Project Leo and Project Boar capacity category. - **[[EMH&T]] is Forgelight's site-civil engineer.** The [[Project Stratus Permits Sequencing and Stormwater|January 21, 2025 stormwater call email]] thread shows EMH&T (Robert McCurnin, Mariah Anderson PE, Mackenzie Hebert) working Project Stratus drainage with the City of Conway. **EMH&T is also the engineering client on the [[Project Boar Site Survey|Project Boar ALTA/NSPS Survey]]** at the Port of Little Rock for [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]] — providing a **second Tier-1 correspondence-based shared-vendor channel** between Forgelight and Willowbend (in addition to the [[Kutak Rock LLP|shared counsel]] finding from the [[2026-05 Little Rock Port Authority Produces Project Boar Records|Project Boar production]]). - Per [[T003 - Shell-LLC Principal Attribution for Forgelight and Willowbend|T003]] / [[D003 Synthesis]] the standard for Tier-1 promotion of principal-identification attribution is ~three independent confirming channels. Conway-Willowbend now has **two correspondence-based shared-vendor channels** (counsel + engineer) plus the registry-level shared organizer [[Michael Montfort]]. **Each shared-vendor channel by itself is insufficient to identify the principal**; together they materially strengthen the Forgelight↔Willowbend developer-overlap finding but do not close the T003 bracketed-adjacent question. The Forgelight principal remains unidentified on the available record. The City of Conway production contains no Tier-1 city-source identification of Forgelight's principal. The MOU calls the developer "the Company" and "a US-based Fortune 100 company"; the FAQ never names it; the staff Teams chats use "Forgelight" or "the developer." Google-attribution arguments in the [[Project Stratus Public-Comment Correspondence Record|constituent letters]] (Liberty Parks–forwarded Courtney Bryan op-ed) are Tier-3 inference, not city admission. The standard set by the [[Altitude Capital, LLC]] case (three Tier-1 confirming channels for Google identification at West Memphis) is not yet met. ## Updated by the 2026-05-29 Conway Corporation production — a second developer-side name The [[2026-05 Conway Corporation Produces Project Stratus Records|Conway Corporation production]] of 2026-05-29 surfaces a **different named developer-side entity**: the individual Project Stratus NDAs that Conway Corporation staff signed name "**[[Spark Innovations, LLC]]**, for itself and its parent, subsidiaries and affiliates ('Company')," governed by **New York** law (see [[Conway Corporation Project Stratus NDAs]]). This is distinct from "Forgelight Ventures, LLC" (the MOU developer of record, a **Delaware** filing organized by [[Michael Montfort]]). **The SoS registry now ties Spark Innovations into the same Montfort shell cluster (verified 2026-05-29).** Spark Innovations LLC is a **Delaware shell registered in Arkansas** (filing 811524872, 2024-11-25) with **[[Michael Montfort]] as Manager** — the same manager as Forgelight and [[Willowbend Capital, LLC]], the same registered agent (Corporation Service Company), and the same Wilmington, DE private-mailbox building ([SoS record](../../web%20archive/2026-05-29/sos-corp-search.ark.org/spark-innovations-llc-sos-record.md)). The Conway project therefore ties into the Montfort cluster through **two** entities — Forgelight (the MOU developer of record) and Spark (the NDA "Company") — and Spark is independently reported (Tier-3) as an early affiliate of the **confirmed-Google West Memphis / [[GROOT LLC]] / Project Pyramid** site. Per [[D003 Synthesis]] the shared-Montfort registry pattern is still **not** principal-identification; dialectic [[D005 Synthesis|D005]] (2026-05-29) tested whether the Spark finding changes that and **reaffirmed restraint** — a stronger Tier-2 structural link (three shells; two Conway footholds), recorded as such, but not an identification. The wiki does not, on this record, assert the Conway principal. See [[Spark Innovations, LLC]].