Building inference data centers on the high seas
Notes de l’épisode
Amidst the increasing urgency of powering data centers, a new solution has entered the mix: send them out to sea.
In this episode, Shayle speaks to Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO of Panthalassa. The company is building 85-meter steel "nodes" – taller than Big Ben – that it deploys into the deep ocean. These untethered, self-propelled nodes harness wave energy to power AI clusters, then beam their data back to land via satellite. The technology isn’t without its fair share of logistic complications, but it nonetheless offers a pathway to powering the AI boom that’s largely independent from grid or fuel constraints.
Shayle and Garth cover topics including:
- The physics and mechanics that power Panthalassa’s nodes
- The significance of building an autonomous fleet
- The energy generation waiting to be tapped in the open ocean
- The logistics and unit economics behind scaling Panthalassa’s technology
- Why deep-sea compute is well-suited for long-running workloads like inference and reinforcement learning
- Catalyst: AI scaling pathways: On grid, on edge, off grid, off planet
- Catalyst: How to build more hydropower
- Latitude Media: Are Thiel-funded floating data centers enough to make wave energy pencil?
- Open Circuit: Grid utilization vs expansion: The 100 GW debate
- Latitude Media: What geothermal can learn from offshore wind’s demise
Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.
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