For the same reasons as you’d think to put them in space, I guess. I don’t know what those people say exactly, but big companies can’t get enough compute and the main reason for that is power. A data center can be built in under two years but they’re looking for 500 MW to 1 GW of power from the grid, and that’s the size of a small town. The grid connections and upgrades needed take years and the power supply can’t keep up. Another issue is the community pushback. It’s important that data center development is done with clean energy and not impinging communities and resources. That’s why we’re putting them offshore. If they come up with their own power supply, it addresses that power constraint issue.

Our data center model, Blue Core, will be floating on the surface. Our systems will be big, but they won’t be as big as oil rigs or anything.

It generates renewable energy from the waves. It will be like an offshore microgrid with built-in solar panels and battery storage and this technology and its deployment offshore have been demonstrated. What we have yet to demonstrate is the integration of that with the data center side of things in a marine environment.

Corrosion can be addressed by putting everything inside sealed containers, which is one idea we’re working on. This container would be filled with nitrogen. That’s what Microsoft did with their subsea data center, Project Natick, which was not subjected to wave motions and had eight times better reliability than the equivalent onshore.

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