U.S. Start-Up Develops Floating Data Centres Powered by Wave Energy

Panthalassa is building autonomous floating data centres that operate in the ocean and generate their own electricity from wave power. The Oregon-based company announced $140 million in funding last week and says the platforms could bypass overwhelmed electrical grids.

The structures are 85 metres tall and shaped like a golf ball on a tee. They are towed into the water, then self-propel to their locations where wave motion pushes seawater through a tube to spin turbines that power onboard computing hardware.

Servers sit in sealed modules below the water surface, allowing the container walls to act as heat exchangers that dissipate heat into surrounding cold water. Ocean currents disperse the waste heat, though effects on marine ecosystems remain unclear.

The company plans to transmit processed data back to land users via Starlink satellites. This setup suits AI workloads that run for hours or days before returning results, such as model training or scientific simulations.

Koomey, a former researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said wave power can work but the ocean environment creates maintenance difficulties. Salt and waves can damage machinery, he stated. Jacqueline Davis at the Uptime Institute said power and networking are the top causes of data centre outages.

She noted that automation remains limited and human physical intervention is often needed during incidents. Panthalassa did not respond to questions before publication. U.K. are also exploring offshore computing systems, though such projects remain largely experimental.