Panthalassa: the wave power plant running AI in the open ocean
Panthalassa wants to generate power from ocean waves and run AI on steel buoys far from shore. Here's how it works, who invested, and what remains unproven.
NinaKalkazu.org
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Narrated by Thalita
In a warehouse at the old Kaiser shipyard, where the United States assembled more than 140 ships during World War II, steel plates and welding robots now serve another contest: the race for energy to power artificial intelligence. The factory was inaugurated on November 6, 2026 by Panthalassa, an Oregon company that wants to generate electricity from ocean waves.
The plan seems strange at first glance. Instead of sending wave energy to land by cable, Panthalassa takes AI chips to the middle of the ocean. Each structure, which the company calls a node, generates its own power, runs calculations there, and sends only the answer back by satellite.
What follows: how the machine works, what the company says it costs, and what critics say doesn't add up.
Quick summary: the answer in 30 seconds. Panthalassa builds giant steel buoys, without anchor or cable, that transform the rise and fall of waves into electricity. That power feeds AI chips on board, cooled by seawater, and the answers go to land by satellite. The company raised $140 million in a round led by Peter Thiel and promises commercial operation in 2027. None of this has been proven at scale yet.
Index
- What is Panthalassa?
- Why does AI need a new energy source?
- How does wave energy become electricity?
- Data center in the ocean: why take the chip to the energy?
- How much does it cost and how much power does each node generate?
- When does Panthalassa start operating?
- Floating data center: is Panthalassa alone?
- What still needs to be proven?
- Worth keeping an eye on?
- Frequently asked questions
What is Panthalassa?
Panthalassa is a Portland, Oregon company, founded in 2016, that develops floating machines to extract energy from waves on the high seas. It is a public benefit corporation, a type of company that assumes a social mission beyond profit in its charter.
The founders are Garth Sheldon-Coulson, the CEO, and Brian Moffat, chief innovation officer. In the company's official video, they say the first tests were in a water tank in the garage. Today Panthalassa's website lists former SpaceX and NASA employees on the team.
Why does AI need a new energy source?
Because AI data centers, warehouses full of computers running all the time, are growing faster than the power grid can keep up. Each new building full of chips needs lots of electricity, water for cooling, and permits that take years. Panthalassa itself lists these bottlenecks: grid at capacity, water shortage, permit delays, and impact on neighboring cities.
A data center works like an industrial kitchen whose stoves are chips.
We've already explained who pays the power bill for AI data centers. Panthalassa proposes to seek that energy where there are no neighbors, no grid, and no permit queue: the middle of the ocean.
How does wave energy become electricity?
Panthalassa's machine is a steel tube open at the bottom, with a ball on top, that floats vertically. When the wave lifts and lowers the structure, the water inside the tube rises and falls.
The trick is halfway through. According to the company, the water rising through the tube hits a bottleneck, like a hose nozzle, and each impact creates a high-pressure jet. It's similar to "water hammer," the bang you hear in the pipe when you suddenly close a faucet.
The jet fills a pressurized reservoir, and from there the water descends through a turbine. "At that point, it's like a hydroelectric plant," says an engineer in the video. There are almost no moving parts besides the turbine: at sea, every hinge becomes a failure point.
No anchor, no cable: a giant Roomba
Panthalassa's nodes aren't fixed to the seafloor. The wave motion itself pushes the hull, like wind pushes a sailboat, and a control system chooses the direction. "It's like a Roomba, only huge," Sheldon-Coulson told CBS, comparing it to the robot vacuum.
Each node carries batteries for two to four hours of operation when the sea calms, according to the executive.
Data center in the ocean: why take the chip to the energy?
Because bringing energy from the high seas to land requires extremely expensive submarine cables, and the best waves are far from shore. Panthalassa inverts the logic: it puts the chips inside the node, uses the electricity right there, and sends to land only the calculation result, which is light and travels by satellite.
It's like a bakery next to the wheat field: instead of transporting the flour (the electricity), it ships only the bread (the AI's answers).
According to the official announcement of May 4, 2026, the nodes send tokens (pieces of text that the AI generates) via low-orbit satellites, which pass closer to Earth; the American press points to Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet.
The sea also solves the other major data center problem: heat. The cold water around it works as free air conditioning. According to the CEO, the chips are in a sealed compartment, with the air replaced by nitrogen, a gas that doesn't corrode parts, without dust or humidity.
Why only inference, not training?
Inference is the AI answering: you ask, the model calculates and returns. Training is the phase when the model learns from billions of examples, using thousands of chips connected by very fast cables. That work doesn't fit in a buoy connected by satellite.
In the interview with the Catalyst podcast, Sheldon-Coulson said the satellite adds about 100 milliseconds of delay. In a real-time voice conversation, that matters. For an AI agent (a program that completes tasks in several steps on its own) that spends minutes writing code alone, it makes almost no difference. That's why the target is long tasks, and what requires instant response stays on land.
How much does it cost and how much power does each node generate?
According to the CEO, a commercial node should generate between 200 kilowatts and 1 megawatt, with the sweet spot near 400 kilowatts. Each should cost $1 million to $1.5 million to manufacture at scale, not counting transportation and maintenance. None of these numbers has been verified by anyone outside.
The bet is scale: thousands of nodes working together like a data center spread across the sea.
| Item | What Panthalassa says |
|---|---|
| Power per node | 200 kW to 1 MW, ideal near 400 kW |
| Cost per node | $1 to 1.5 million, without logistics |
| Energy price | Target of $0.02 per kWh at scale |
| Size | Width at top: 10 to 30 m; submerged part: 70 to 100 m |
The kWh (kilowatt-hour) is the same unit as on your electricity bill.
When does Panthalassa start operating?
The company tested two prototypes at sea, Ocean-1 in 2021 and Ocean-2 in 2024. The next step is the Ocean-3 series, the first to run AI at sea, in the North Pacific. Commercial operation is scheduled for 2027, according to the May announcement.
Ocean-2, about 60 meters long, spent three weeks in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a body of water between Washington state and Canada, according to the HeraldNet newspaper.
Ocean-3 has already changed dates. In April, the CEO spoke of putting it to sea around August; in May, he mentioned October. As of November 7, 2026, we found no public confirmation that it is at sea.
The Vancouver, Washington factory is the company's first assembly line. According to public radio OPB, it will have about 50 people and will send the nodes down the Columbia River to the sea.
Who is putting money into Panthalassa?
In May 2026, Panthalassa announced a funding round (investor money in exchange for a stake in the company) of $140 million, led by Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and Palantir. Also joining were John Doerr, Marc Benioff's TIME Ventures, server manufacturer Super Micro, and Founders Fund. According to a spokesperson, total funding reached $210 million.
"The future demands more compute than we can imagine," Thiel said in the announcement. "Panthalassa has opened the ocean frontier." So far, however, we haven't found any announced customer for this computing.
Floating data center: is Panthalassa alone?
No. Microsoft has already tested servers on the seafloor, and other companies are following the trail. Panthalassa's difference is generating its own power from waves, without any cable to shore.
| Project | Energy | Where | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Panthalassa | Waves, generated on board | High seas, no anchor | Pilot planned, commercial in 2027 |
| Aikido | Wind, floating turbine | North Sea, Norway | 100 kW prototype planned for 2026 |
| Microsoft Natick | Power grid, by cable | Seafloor, Scotland | 2018 test, discontinued |
According to IEEE Spectrum, Aikido was born after its president met Panthalassa's. Microsoft's test is the best available blocked: according to TechCrunch, only six of more than 850 servers failed in 25 months. Even so, the project was abandoned.
What still needs to be proven?
Almost everything that matters when there are thousands of nodes at sea. No independent data on power production from a Panthalassa prototype has been published. It's also unknown how thousands of nodes withstand years of salt, storms, and wear, or how much it costs to maintain them.
The harshest critic is analyst Michael Barnard, who wrote in CleanTechnica that "the ocean is not a server rack" (the cabinet where servers are stacked). Electricity is what pays for the machine, and by his calculation, a 0.5 megawatt node running year-round would yield about $87,600 per year at 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. That's not much to pay for a million-dollar machine.
The sector's track record weighs heavily: Finland's AW-Energy and America's AquaHarmonics, both wave energy companies, went bankrupt, Latitude Media notes. "Energy infrastructure is not software," researcher Bryson Robertson from the University of Victoria told the site.
There's also the environment: dumping heat into the sea can affect marine life and require permits, analyst Daniel King from the Foundation for American Innovation reminded IEEE Spectrum.
Worth keeping an eye on?
Yes, with the right yardstick. Panthalassa has money, prototypes tested at sea, and a ready factory. But it hasn't yet proven the hard part: operating hundreds of nodes for years, with cheap energy and maintenance that fits the budget.
| If you are… | What to watch |
|---|---|
| Curious about technology | Whether Ocean-3 goes to sea and actually runs AI |
| Investor or entrepreneur | Whether a customer appears paying for this computing |
| Interested in climate | Independent data on power generated and ocean impact |
The most important signal will be the first contract. To follow other contests like this, see our artificial intelligence section.
Frequently asked questions
What is Panthalassa?
It's an American company, from Portland, that builds floating steel structures to generate energy from waves on the high seas. The electricity runs AI chips on board, and the answers go by satellite.
Is Panthalassa already operating?
Not commercially yet. The company tested prototypes in 2021 and 2024 and inaugurated the factory in November 2026. Commercial operation is planned for 2027.
Is wave energy cheap?
Not so far: no project has been profitable at large scale. Panthalassa promises 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, but it's a target without independent confirmation.
Panthalassa bets that the emptiest place on the planet can become artificial intelligence's power outlet. The coming months in the North Pacific will tell whether it's a power plant or just a good story.
