Investors like Silicon Valley Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has bet hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy wave-powered AI data centers in the middle of the world’s oceans — coinciding with the increasing difficulty tech companies have in building AI data center projects on land.
The latest investment The $140 million round is designed to help the company Pantalassa Complete a pilot production facility near Portland, Oregon, and accelerate the deployment of wave “nodes” designed to generate electricity. Instead of sending the renewable energy to a land-based data center, the floating nodes will directly power the AI chips and transmit outputs representing the outputs of the AI models to customers around the world via satellite link.
“The idea of Panthalassa turns the problem of power transmission into a problem of data transmission” Benjamin LeeA computer architect and engineer at the University of Pennsylvania told Ars. “Performing artificial intelligence computation in the ocean requires moving models to ocean-based nodes and then responding to instructions and requests.”
Each node looks like a giant steel ball rotating on the water with its tube-like structure extending vertically down from the surface. The wave motions move the water upward through a pipe into a pressurized reservoir where it can be released to spin a turbine generator that produces renewable energy for the onboard AI chips.
Panthalassa claims the node’s AI chips will also be cooled using the surrounding water, which could offer another advantage over traditional data centers. “Ocean-based computing can offer a huge cooling advantage because the ambient temperature is so low,” Li said. “Land-based data centers use a lot of electricity and fresh water for cooling.”
