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Oregon-based startup Panthalassa is developing floating AI data centers powered by wave energy. The 85-meter-long system uses seawater to cool AI chips while turbines generate electricity from ocean waves. A prototype called Ocean-2 is already being tested off the coast of Washington, with AI data transmitted through SpaceX's Starlink network.

551,004 views • 1 month ago •via X (Twitter)

35 Comments

Ryan Tyre 🇺🇸's profile picture
Ryan Tyre 🇺🇸1 month ago

Somali pirates: "I am the AI master now" 👀

Stephen McLean's profile picture
Stephen McLean1 month ago

Next up, these floating data centers are the cause of ocean warming...

Ferdinand Fourie's profile picture
Ferdinand Fourie1 month ago

Lets raise the ocean temperature further. Great idea.

Nathan's profile picture
Nathan1 month ago

This will heat the oceans and have devastating environmental impact.

Cthulhubeard's profile picture
Cthulhubeard1 month ago

"so, you are gonna put millions of dollars of gold, and other precious booty, floating out in the water, unattended..."

Dennis's profile picture
Dennis1 month ago

Trying to be environmentally friendly while warming the ocean directly. Nice.

zarth.dev's profile picture
zarth.dev1 month ago

I am wondering if it is causing some damage to marine ecosystems or not.

Alex Steryous's profile picture
Alex Steryous1 month ago

Harnessing oceanic power is a difficult engineering problem Saltwater corrosion, biofouling, extreme storms, and powerful forces require heavily over-engineered, expensive structures that still face high failure and maintenance risks. Access for repairs is weather-dependent and costly.

Dr. h.c. Andreas Ludwig Kalcker's profile picture
Dr. h.c. Andreas Ludwig Kalcker1 month ago

Another bullshit idea for stupid investors. Every single try to create energy from waves or the ocean have been a nightmare due to corrosion.

Casey's profile picture
Casey1 month ago

-sigh- the thing all these ocean deployed systems fail to recognize is the harshness of the ocean environment and the amount of maintenance and refurb needed to keep them from destruction.

Andre William Duval's profile picture
Andre William Duval1 month ago

Data centers are being used to train superintelligent AIs to replace humans everywhere. Environmentally sound data centers - if that what these are supposed to be - are just a smoother path to extinction. They are chocolate-flavored arsenic.

Will Tygart's profile picture
Will Tygart1 month ago

Brilliant! Meanwhile I'm over here vibe coding a cool button connected to obsidian that orders door dash...

Xalmon's profile picture
Xalmon1 month ago

The issue is, they wouldn’t generate enough electricity to power a very big GPU.

Kevin's profile picture
Kevin1 month ago

👀

Scapes's profile picture
Scapes1 month ago

Maybe they can attach a mine to it and send it to the Hormuz straight 🤪

Gigi B's profile picture
Gigi B1 month ago

Mother Nature finally getting equity in the compute boom

♰'s profile picture
♰1 month ago

@ekpodar There have been so many complaints about water usage that they just started putting the data centers in the water

Danny 🐣's profile picture
Danny 🐣1 month ago

boiling the oceans will reach a whole new meaning soon 😅

Scott Dinger's profile picture
Scott Dinger1 month ago

Will anyone be surprised when it’s perfected that the whale humpers and “red skins” bitch about their spirit animals suffering and halt it from ever becoming realized??

Nick's profile picture
Nick1 month ago

How many of these things would need to be floating around the ocean with long ass cords connecting to mainland, ugh.

Lorenzo Villa's profile picture
Lorenzo Villa1 month ago

@nselmi @AleMas2100 time for you to launch Tamaladissa

VeyrAshka's profile picture
VeyrAshka1 month ago

force open source ocean vessels must install to account for social impacts cuz thar be scammers cap’n but also net benefits send data to Starmind while harnessing wave, solar and SMRs think of the good we do compounding this system. Wars are cancelled. Back to your corners.

DiscoCowboy's profile picture
DiscoCowboy1 month ago

This just seems completely idiotic from the start. Let's fill the surrounding coastlines with giant floating balls said no one ever.

Jessica Queenann's profile picture
Jessica Queenann1 month ago

@TherealCurtJ If they could pull it off, wouldn't this be better than putting them near population centers?

Convexity🟦🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧's profile picture
Convexity🟦🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧1 month ago

intriguing idea, but my quick back of the envelope calculation tells me it's implausible these systems can generate anywhere near enough electrical power to power even a modest data center.

いしかわひさし's profile picture
いしかわひさし1 month ago

@shamilsh 水が動く経路の清掃のメカニズムがどうなっているのかな。 貝類や藻類は強烈。フジツボ対策に船底塗装も一年毎に塗り直すらしい。 パイプ状になってるなら、なお難しいと思うが…

George Will's profile picture
George Will1 month ago

Great, save the environment......🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🇦🇶🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

kaiser's profile picture
kaiser1 month ago

KIYAMET ALAMETİ KURAN I KERİMDE GEÇEN AYET "DENİZLER KAYNATILDIĞINDA" 😲😲😲 SUBHANALLAH.

Larry DeGala's profile picture
Larry DeGala1 month ago

this innovation will never be implemented because A.I. founders are only interested in making the buucuu bucks and be a bunch of cheap skates!

J.A.'s profile picture
J.A.1 month ago

The vibe product development have gone too far.

Beltfedshooters's profile picture
Beltfedshooters1 month ago

I'm sure the fish will be thrilled by the humming noise.

SpaceBob's profile picture
SpaceBob1 month ago

Good luck🤣

AshmanRoonz's profile picture
AshmanRoonz1 month ago

Cool the chips with sea water and warm the sea water more than we already want it?

Atomic Alchemist's profile picture
Atomic Alchemist1 month ago

Why?

Gautier Bonnemaison's profile picture
Gautier Bonnemaison1 month ago

Please do not make people slaves

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The AI infrastructure race just went underwater. A Portland, Oregon startup called Panthalassa just raised $140 million in a Series B round led by Peter Thiel, the idea sounds wild until you understand the physics. Every AI data center on Earth has the same three problems, it needs massive amounts of electricity, it generates enormous heat that has to be cooled, and it requires land in places that are already running out of grid capacity. Panthalassa's answer is to eliminate all three constraints at once by taking the data center off the grid, off the land, and into the open ocean. And here's how it works, the company builds autonomous, self-propelled floating nodes made from plate steel, no anchor, no fuel, no cable to shore. As waves lift the platform, water is forced through an internal turbine, generating electricity continuously. That electricity runs AI inference chips onboard and the results go back to shore via low-Earth-orbit satellite. The surrounding ocean provides free supercooling, which one investor estimates could generate power at roughly two cents per kilowatt-hour. For context on why this matters, land based data centers spend up to 40% of their total energy budget just on cooling. Microsoft's Project Natick found that submerged servers had a failure rate of just 0.7% compared to 5.9% on land. The ocean doesn't just solve the cost problem but it solves the reliability problem too. Panthalassa's Ocean 3 pilot nodes are already under construction, with deployment in the northern Pacific targeted for August 2026 and commercial operations in 2027. The company has been building toward this for a decade with Ocean-1, Ocean-2, and Wavehopper prototypes already validated at sea, including a test in Puget Sound in 2024. The global underwater data center market was $3.2 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $14.8 billion by 2034. China has already launched commercial-scale undersea data centers. The race to compute off the grid whether in space, underwater, or on the open ocean is no longer theoretical, it's being funded, permitted, and in Panthalassa's case, it's being built right now. The future is bright!

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