Hardware Podcasts

Building inference data centers on the high seas

Catalyst · 28 May 2026 · 48m

What this episode covers

Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO of Panthalassa, explains how the company builds 85-meter steel 'nodes' that harness wave energy to power AI inference clusters in the deep ocean. He details the 'Ocean Hydro' technology, which uses a rigid hull shape to pump seawater into a reservoir and drive a turbine, eliminating the need for anchors or shore-based cables. Sheldon-Coulson discusses the unit economics, noting that while power costs are low (3.5-4 cents/kWh), the primary value lies in high availability and free seawater cooling for compute hardware. He outlines the company's roadmap from full-scale prototypes like Ocean 2 to the commercial Ocean 3 pilot fleet launching in late 2026, targeting long-running inference and reinforcement learning workloads.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Panthalassa, EnergyHub, Raytheon, Collins Aerospace
Products
Starlink, Ocean 1, Ocean 2, Wave Hopper, Ocean 3

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