Peter Thiel leads $140m investment in wave-powered ocean data centers

In short: Peter Thiel is leading a $140m investment in Panthalassa, a start-up that wants to run floating data centers at sea using wave power.

What happened

Panthalassa, a start-up based in Oregon, says it can turn the up and down motion of ocean waves into electricity. It plans to use that power to run data centers, which are large buildings or containers full of computers that store and process information.

The company says the new funding will help it expand a pilot factory and prepare for commercial deployments next year. A person familiar with the deal told the Financial Times the investment values Panthalassa at close to $1bn, including the new money.

Panthalassa’s floating units, which it calls “nodes,” are large steel structures about 85 metres long. Most of each unit sits below the surface and includes a sealed container holding computer servers (the machines that do the work), cooled by seawater. The company says the vessels can move themselves using wave motion, without an engine, and will connect to the internet using SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.

Other investors in the round include Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, PayPal and Affirm co-founder Max Levchin, and venture capitalist John Doerr.

Why it matters

More AI use means more demand for electricity, because training and running AI systems requires a lot of computing. Companies are looking for new power sources and new places to put data centers, partly because land-based power grids are already strained in many regions. Panthalassa’s approach is like putting a power plant and a computer server room on the same raft, so it can use the electricity right where it is produced instead of trying to send it back to shore.

Source: Financial Times