Peter Thiel is leading investment in a reportedly $1 billion wave-powered ocean data center project
As hyperscalers like Alphabet look to the skies as the following frontier of data facilities, Peter Thiel is trying to the seas.
Panthalassa, a US-based begin up betting on ocean waves to energy a fleet of floating data facilities, announced $140 million in funding earlier this month led by Thiel.
The funding pushes Panthalassa’s valuation near $1 billion, the Financial Times reportedciting a individual acquainted with the phrases of the deal.
“The future demands more compute than we can imagine,” Thiel stated in a assertion saying the funding. “Extra-terrestrial solutions are no longer science fiction. Panthalassa has opened the ocean frontier.”
Surging AI demand in the US has hit snags with an getting older and beleaguered grid system susceptible to excessive climate. Energy analytics agency Wood Mackenzie famous in a report earlier this 12 months that data center improvement you have slowed down because of restricted electrical energy capability development. Bottlenecked by power infrastructure from way back to World War II, tech firms are looking for extraterrestrial sands to construct out data facilities with out taxing accessible assets.
Panthalassa, sharing the identify with the superocean that after surrounded the supercontinent of Pangaea, has designed “nodes” that sit on high of the ocean, with practically 280-foot-long metal buildings extending under the floor. The sphere on the high of the node bobs in the water, with the hooked up tube oscillating water inside it, spinning generators contained in the construction that generate electrical energy. The construction additionally holds a hermetically sealed, or hermetic, AI server that is cooled by surrounding seawater.
The firm spent years designing Ocean-1 and Ocean-2 prototypes, starting in 2021, and plans to deploy its most up-to-date Ocean-3 system in the northern Pacific Ocean this 12 months, with industrial deployment to observe in 2027, in keeping with the corporate.
“There are three sources of energy on the planet with tens of terawatts of new capacity potential: solar, nuclear, and the open ocean,” Panthalassa cofounder and CEO Garth Sheldon-Coulson stated in a assertion. “We’ve built a technology platform that operates in the planet’s most energy-dense wave regions, far from shore, and turns that resource into reliable clean power. We’re now ready to build factories, deploy fleets, and provide a sustainable new source of energy for humanity.”
Thiel’s wager on subsea data facilities
Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of Palantir and PayPal, has taken a particular curiosity in the ocean as the following frontier for human improvement. For practically twenty years, the investor has proven curiosity in seasteading, or the Libertarianism-inspired creation of everlasting, autonomous islands on the excessive seas impartial from different international locations’ jurisdictions. In 2008, Thiel donated $500,000 to The Seasteading Institute, a company based by a former Google engineer and Sun Microsystems programmer to spearhead these utopian-adjacent sea communities.
“It hits such a nerve because in this idea of starting a new country or doing something new, it reminds people that if we had to design a country from scratch—design the state of California from scratch—it would be so different, and there’s all these super corrupt governance institutions we’d clean out,” Thiel stated in a 2018 interview.
Though Thiel’s perception in the near-future viability of seasteading appears to have wantedhis curiosity in ocean-based ventures has not. Thiel’s enterprise capital fund Founders Fund backed Panthalassa in 2018, however Thiel is now investing in the startup via his private fund, in keeping with the FT.
But like seasteading, scaling AI infrastructure in earth’s large our bodies of water might not see quick success. While earlier iterations of subsea data facilities have proven promise—Microsoft’s Project Natickwhich ended in 2024, submerged practically 900 servers in the Scottish Sea and had fewer submerged servers break in comparison with management servers on dry land—researchers nonetheless see dangers related to scaling subsea programs.
“The main advantages of having a data center underwater are the free cooling and the isolation from variable environments on land,” Md Jahidul Islam, a University of Florida professor {of electrical} and pc engineering who authored a examine on the potential risks of subsea infrastructure, stated in an interview final 12 months with the college.
According to Islam’s analysis, dense water can carry acoustic alerts quicker than air, making them susceptible to acoustic assaults. Isolated data facilities underwater can be tough to watch and, subsequently, to establish if a element breaks.
“These two advantages can also become liabilities,” he stated.
Panthalassa stated these liabilities have been “a non-issue” for its structure.
“We designed our nodes with acoustic and mechanical resilience in mind,” the spokesperson stated in a assertion to Fortune. “Our architecture is built around solid-state components, pressure-vessel isolation, and rigorous environmental testing. Unlike rotating hard drives, solid-state electronics have no mechanical components to disrupt.”