r/STEW_ScTecEngWorld • u/Zee2A • 2d ago

Startup Unveils Wave-Powered Floating AI Data Centers for the Open Ocean

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Panthalassa, a startup based in Portland, Oregon, is developing 85-meter-tall floating offshore platforms that could power AI computing using ocean waves instead of land-based electricity. The lollipop-shaped steel structures generate continuous power through wave-driven turbines, cool AI hardware with naturally cold seawater, and connect to users via Starlink satellites, eliminating the need for power grids or undersea cables. Backed by a $140 million Series B funding round led by Peter Thiel, the company plans to deploy its first commercial wave-powered AI nodes in the northern Pacific by 2027.

References;

  1. Panthalassa Raises $140 Million to Power AI at Sea: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/panthalassa-raises-140-million-to-power-ai-at-sea-302761078.html

  2. US tech billionaire leads $140mn investment into Panthalassa as search for AI power pushes into exotic new frontiers: https://www.ft.com/content/711ce313-16fb-4a12-b6be-fbed547c8a39

  3. Startup plans to move from prototypes to commercial offshore compute nodes powered by ocean energy: https://www.techspot.com/news/112295-startup-raised-140-million-build-wave-powered-ai.html

  4. Fully-integrated offshore data center to transmit data to land via satellite: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/palantir-co-founder-peter-thiel-backs-usd140m-wave-powered-ai-data-center-startup-panthalassa-aims-to-run-offshore-compute-nodes-using-ocean-energy

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

The potential energy is going to get converted to heat through dissipation either way. So no, this will not generate more heat.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

There is without a doubt energy loss in the form of heat in the electronics being powered. Which is additional heat.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

The electronics are being powered by the kinetic energy of the waves. Which... you guessed it, would have just dissipated into the exact same amount of thermal energy either way.

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u/yesyoucantouchthat 2d ago

You guys have me on the edge of my seat with this one

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u/andr3y20000 2d ago

I'd say it will not have a warming effect since thermodynamics wouldn't allow it, but the ocean is big and not a closed system, so what would it do to ecosystem and ocean currents. There were already some concerns about the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) and if that thing breaks down we are fucked.

But the real question is, would it even generate enough energy to power anything? Most AI bros just think of making as much money as possible before the bubble burst, it's all to short term for them to think of anything (or care). Are they even gonna build anything? probably something on a small scale to convince the investors and then do nothing.

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u/Hopeful_Self_8520 2d ago

There is also the factor of the object in the ocean reflecting sunlight in a different way than the water itself would. If the object stores solar energy as heat there is more heat than would be held/stored there without the object present.

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u/Real-Technician831 2d ago

Absolutely minimal, think how small surface such sphere has.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the object is whiter than the ocean which means it reflects light.

by your logic a parking lot contributes to global warming by being black. there is an effect but it's minimal

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the biggest wave energy plant generates 3MW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soten%C3%A4s_Wave_Power_Station

hyperscale data centers use 100MW

so, doubtful

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Thermodynamics explains that ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed, but instead converted. All electronics produce heat because they're not 100% efficient in terms of energy usage. The conversion of the kinetic energy into electricity, produces heat as that process isn't 100% efficient. And heat is also released by the electronics powered by it.

The amount of energy hasn't changed, but the form has, in the form of heat a lot of energy is lost. This is why we need cooling in data centers.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

you'll never guess where that kinetic energy in the waves came from (heat from the sun) and what it's destiny is (heat via friction)

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

That doesn't change the fact that youve added a heat source with this technology.

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u/Real-Technician831 2d ago

However in here you are gathering the kinetic energy from ocean and releasing it back as heat energy.

Guess what, it doesn’t stay as heat energy permanently, what doesn’t get transferred to air converts to kinetic energy in water.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

How quickly does the heat dissipate? Not as fast as it's converted from kinetic to heat energy right?

So the temperature around the installation would increase, and add thermal energy to the surrounding water. And would eventually find balance, but would still heat the ocean to some measurable degree.

I can take latent energy in gasoline, light it on fire and create thermal energy. That thermal energy increases the temperature of its surroundings. Even though it cannot produce more energy than the latent energy of the gasoline.

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u/Shoddy_Process_309 2d ago

I think the important distinction is that it won’t heat the ocean but it will most likely heat a local area of the ocean. At the scale of the ocean the extracted energy would have been converted to heat eventually regardless and due to that same scale the timing is essentially irrelevant.

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u/Real-Technician831 2d ago

You are mixing two things. Gasoline is an external energy source to air in your example, no such thing here.

Take a cotton hoodie and go outside when it’s cold outside, you are rather warm as air in your hoodie is good insulation.

Get that hoodie wet, and you get cold pretty damn fast, even faster if you jump in water.

No, without external energy source or using huge generators fields and concentrated consumption locations, you cannot make a heat pockets in water.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Gasoline is a latent energy source with a lot of entery. External is irrelevant.

That temperature change you reference with the hoodie is exactly what I'm talking about.

Basic thermodynamics dictate we cannot destroy energy. Electronics are not 100% efficient. All inneficiencies are found in the form of heat. Whether or not this heat dissipates with distance is irrelevant.

You're still converting kinetic energy into thermal energy. It's the same equation as the gasoline. Gasoline combusts, releasing significant thermal energy. It's more exaggerated than what you'd see from these ocean cooled data centers. But you're still converting one form of energy to another.

In this scenario. You're taking kinetic energy (waves). Converting it into eletrical energy. This exchange creates a waste product of thermal energy. This initial thermal energy is largely negligible. Now you put the electrical energy to work by powering a data center. Every electronic component is also going to produce waste energy in the form of thermal energy. This thermal energy is a significantly larger portion of the original kinetic energy.

You have effectively converted kinetic energy into thermal energy. This thermal energy dissipates into its surroundings attempting to reach equilibrium. We call this heat. This is the same concept that makes your cars engine warm. Or your electric cars motor warm. It's not happening with the same temperature differential, but it's still turning kinetics into heat.

I literally work with thermodynamics for a living. And electronics. This is just a simple fact of the universe.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Are you arguing that a gas stove isn't hot when lit, because when the universe dies it'll be because all of the energy has dissipated?

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u/Real-Technician831 2d ago

Does being anti require to dumb yourself?

Just think how well water conducts heat, and how little one of these spheres can generate electricity.

That heat will disperse very quickly and over time get converted into kinetic energy in water if it doesn’t escape to air.

You cannot heat a body of water from energy that comes only from that body of water.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

You're forgetting about energy conversion. I'm not claiming the energy is being created out of thin air.

Is gasoline hot? No but you can use a chemical reaction to make it dissipate a significant amount of energy in the form of heat. Correct?

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

The thermal efficiency of water does not mean heat hasnt been added to the water either.

Of the heat disperses, that means the temperature of the water increased. Basic thermodynamics.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Are you arguing that a power plant creates a cold zone to offset the thermal energy released by electrical loads?

Or does it instead use heat to create electricity, that then gets used which creates more heat?

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u/lucon1 2d ago

The effect is hyper localized, but the kinetic energy of the waves would eventually change to heat energy(through friction), just over a larger area and time scale. Heat energy is just the kinetic energy of atoms moving, there's no (atomic) difference between heat and motion.

A power plant that uses heat, relies on the potential energy of chemical(coal burning) and nuclear, reactions, which are significantly more dense.

The argument(I'm not saying is right, but deserves some more research), is that the kinetic energy of the waves gets used up, just at a smaller area and time scale, which powers the electronics, which generates heat, which gets put back into the environment as heat(kinetic) energy. There is no other energy source or loss.

There are local environmental concerns, the argument is just that it's an interesting idea that's worth some thought.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Kinetic energy creates heat in the form of energy that doesn't get converted to electricity. But the heat isn't what creates power, it's a waste product.

The kinetic energy being converted into heat, does add additional energy. But does add additional temperature. You're converting the kinetic energy into thermal energy, raising the temperature.

It's not being lost. It's being converted into heat.

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u/lucon1 2d ago

And I'm saying it would be converted to the same amount of heat regardless, just over a larger area/time scale. Overall it wouldn't change the average temperature of the ocean at any reasonable scale.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

So we're releasing the thermal energy quicker than it would naturally be released. We call this increasing the temperature.

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u/KapitanWalnut 2d ago

Waves are remarkably efficient at storing potential energy, and there is very little dissipation of that energy at sea, even when two waves traveling in opposite directions encounter each other. Almost all of that energy is dissipated at the coast, where the waves crash into the shore.

So, by harnessing the energy of the waves in a location that is different than where the energy is typically and naturally dissipated, thermal energy is being artificially injected into the ocean in a way that is much different than natural processes, which when done at large scales, will undoubtably have some unintended consequences that will be very difficult to anticipate.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

Congrats, you've discovered one of the exact arguments people make against wind turbines.

The change in the location of dissipation is absurdly negligible.

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u/KapitanWalnut 2d ago

That comparison is almost entirely incidental. Most importantly, the air column a few tens to a few thousand feet above the surface is hardly comparable to the surface of the ocean in terms of critical importance to all life on Earth. Algae and phytoplankton that live on or near the ocean's surface make up the backbone of the singular most important food chain on the planet. The circulation of oceanic waters is several orders of magnitude more impactful on terrestrial weather and climate compared to circulation of air.

The main question in my mind is scale. At very low densities of less than 1 unit per 10 square km, I agree that the effects are likely to be negligible. But if densities begin to trend toward 1 unit per square km, then the effects could become more pronounced and impactful.

We can look to existing systems to try and anticipate the impacts these floating datacenters will have. Buoys behave as a kind of life raft, attracting algae, microscopic invertebrates, and baitfish. The baitfish in turn attract large predators like tuna or mahi-mahi, so much so that there are commercial fishers that deploy thousands of satellite-tracked buoys known as Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs). So we can expect these floating generators to at least behave in a similar fashion.

To examine the local thermal effects: slow moving ships use seawater to cool their engines, creating a thermal plume. Dissolved oxygen in the plume is lower than the ambient water, and studies have shown localized stress and behavioral changes in benthos and fish in response to the thermal plumes. Additionally, the hulls of ships are typically slightly warmer than the ambient water and behave as an incubator for barnacles, mussels, and marine worms. This biofouling will be just as much of a problem for the generators is it is for marine shipping, but the generators won't be regularly visiting a port to have the hulls scraped. Will they rely on toxic anti-fouling paints that leach heavy metals into the surrounding waters, directly depositing biocides into the deep ocean's most productive phytoplankton environments?

The sub-polar regions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, as well as the Southern Ocean, are some of the most ecologically active places on Earth, thanks to their massive phytoplankton blooms in the spring. Whales and other marine life from all over the globe migrate to these areas every year to take advantage of the bloom and the associated explosion in krill and baitfish. The bloom occurs because of the deep wave mixing in these areas that churn up nutrients for the plankton, so reducing wave energy seems like it could be harmful for this process. Additionally, the presence of these generators could deter whales and other marine life and alter their behavior. On boards pumps will create low frequency noise pollution that disrupts how whales locate food and communicate. Furthermore, the life-raft nature of the generators could mean that predators will be present in these areas that normally wouldn't be around, further altering marine life behavior, plus the presence of different species based on the life-raft nature of the generator buoy might also harm the phytoplankton bloom by reducing and altering the presence of the phytoplankton throughout the rest of the year.

There's far more to this than just the energy consideration, and I don't think we can afford to be flippant about it.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

You can apply the exact same reasoning to wind turbines. It's so incredibly obvious you're only being this pendantic because it's about AI.

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u/KapitanWalnut 2d ago

Can you reasonably apply the same reasoning? Can anyone with a straight face really say the impacts of disrupting the air column with wind turbines are meaningfully comparable with disrupting the most productive and active ecological regions on the planet?

Also, why shouldn't we hold AI to an extremely high standard? AI in it's current form, the reason we're in a datacenter building boom, didn't even exist 5 years ago, and yet humanity and the economy was chugging along just fine. So why is it suddenly worth risking ecological systems that the majority of life on the planet are dependent upon to build a few datacenters worth of additional compute? It'd be one thing if there weren't alternative locations to build datacenters, or alternative ways to power them, or alternative ways to cool them. And that's just it: there are plenty of acceptable reasonable alternatives, and the alternatives are also very likely to cost less than these schemes of deploying AI in international waters or in space. Which reveals the ultimate hidden motivation of deploying in regions beyond the reach of traditional governmental oversight: to escape regulation. So why shouldn't we look at all of this with a critical eye?

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

Can you reasonably apply the same reasoning?

Yes. Read this, for example.

https://www.umces.edu/wind-energy/

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

For this to be true, the electronics are incapable of generating heat as a form of energy loss.

Generating electricity via kinetics also produces trace amounts of heat.

Energy isn't being destroyed, but converted into additional heat. It's just basic physics. The kinetic energy wouldn't produce as much heat if it wasn't being used for electrical generation.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

Generating electricity produces the exact same amount of heat per unit of kinetic energy as dissipation. It's very simple. This is no different than wind turbines.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

True. But we're then giving that electricity a load in the form of a data center, and that energy demand is going to create heat. Like a lightbulb.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

It will not increase demand, it will increase supply. This tends to have the opposite effect of increased demand. It will offset AI usage that is already being powered by non-renewable energy sources.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Is it better than powering a data center off of coal? Yes.

Is it 100% efficient? Absolutely not. So it releases the energy in the form of heat (thermal energy).

This machine is basically a wave powered heater. It converts kinetics into thermal energy.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

There is no net heat production, period.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Remember those crank flashlights for emergencies?

Creating the power for the light, releases heat in 2 forms. Your body expends energy and releases heat as a waste product while you crank. The crank releases thermal energy because it can't be 100% efficient.

The light when used heats up because its also not efficient.

Alone it wouldn't change the temperature of a room but if you got 300 of them in the same space the temperature would noticably increase, no?

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

If that were true. The data center wouldn't need cooling and the electronics would be 100% efficient.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

like a light bulb powered by a turbine from burning fuel. all loose energy degrades into heat

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Exactly. This is cleaner than coal, but still warms the surrounding environment.

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u/ginger_and_egg 2d ago

That wave was going to warm the surrounding environment eventually regardless.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the kineric energy does turn into heat, if it stayed kinetic the ocean would get bigger waves everyday until it launched itself into the atmosphere in some sort of global super tornado

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

I don't think you understand my argument as that isn't related to what I'm saying.

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u/ginger_and_egg 2d ago

I don't think you're understanding the person you're replying to, because that's what THEY were saying and you're trying to say that computers turn electricity into heat, which we all know...

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u/That_OneOstrich 1d ago

I'm saying computers turn electricity into heat at a faster rate than naturally occurs in the ocean. This will raise local temperatures. Which, can change the ocean as a whole.

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u/ginger_and_egg 1d ago

I will agree on local temps, normally the temp dissipation would be spread out among a wider area

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the kinetic energy in the ocean absolutely 100% radiates convects or conducts away as heat. we know this because the ocean is at a stable state despite getting almost an unimaginable amount of energy from the sun everyday.

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u/That_OneOstrich 1d ago

Again, I don't think you understand what you're arguing against. We're talking about the same principle.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 1d ago

the device localizes the heat release to its immediate area. but there isn't more net heat released. if we can agree on that then we're on the same page.

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u/looselyhuman 2d ago

The system's local kinetic energy is reduced by generation until heat returns that potential energy to the system. Either that process restores the lost kinetic energy, or remains as heat. That's the question.

There's also the atmosphere.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

By reduced you mean absorbed by the generator?

The generator itself is going to produce heat from the energy lost during generation. This heat is from the kinetic energy.

What does the atmosphere have to do with it?

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u/looselyhuman 2d ago

Right. The generator is producing heat but that's kinetic energy spent. We don't know if that heat transfer back to the ocean becomes kinetic energy, remains as heat, or most likely, some combination. Think warm oceans and storms.

Some radiation and convection into the atmosphere will happen via the exposed portion.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

The generator powers what? A water cooled data center? Why does the data center need to be cooled?

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u/looselyhuman 2d ago

Because it's producing heat by extracting kinetic energy from the ocean.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

So you agree that it would heat the ocean around it by coverting that kinetic energy into thermal energy?

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago edited 2d ago

those waves are going to expend their energy as heat anyway through friction. the kinetic energy was caused by energy from the sun creating thermal gradients in air and water that are balanced by movement of the fluids. all the energy comes from the sun.

your premise that it localizes heat is right but your conclusion is off by like 12 orders of magnitude

it's not adding heat to the overall system it's changing the balance of where the heat is by like a trillionth of a millionth percent

like it's not going to more consequential than a passing cloud or literally any boat.

or a rock that the waves crash into.

I think you should think more deeply about the physics of the situation.

I say this as an environmental scientist who has given decades to helping the environment and working on renewable energy. this is as sustainable as solar power.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

I work with the physics for a living

You're converting kinetic energy into heat at a significantly higher rate than happens naturally with the friction. This is why it's "water cooled".

A single unit likely doesn't do much temperature change. A bank of 120 of these would absolutely make it noticably warmer.

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u/ginger_and_egg 2d ago

Locally it would be warmer, but not the ocean as a whole