Floating Data Centres Powered by the Ocean: a Six-Month-Old Startup Raised 20 Million Dollars for an Idea From the 1950s

Artificial intelligence is hungry for power, and data centres on land take years to build. The startup Drogue from Washington, D.C., founded about six months ago, offers a solution that sounds like science fiction: data centres on ships, drawing their power from the heat of the ocean. The company says it has raised 20 million dollars (about 17 million euros), from investors including XYZ Venture Capital, Toyota Ventures, Tamarack Global and Slow Ventures. The company's valuation hasn't been disclosed.

Founder and CEO Sam Sipe is a former US Navy pilot who flew E-2D Hawkeye early-warning aircraft off aircraft carriers. His argument is simple: a classic data centre takes 8 to 10 years to build, while demand from artificial intelligence, according to him, has grown tenfold in three years. Those two timelines don't fit together.

The technology isn't new. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is an idea from the 1950s, tested in the 1980s. Warm surface water cools the servers and heats ammonia to boiling, and the vapour spins a turbine. Cold water, pumped from a depth of about 1,000 metres, turns the ammonia back into liquid. A closed loop - at least on paper.

The first prototype, of a few megawatts, will be housed on an ordinary ocean-going ship, with a trial voyage planned for early 2028. Later versions would look like offshore oil platforms, and each floating data centre would stay on the water for about ten years. Drogue has "approval in principle" from the American Bureau of Shipping and is buying its first ship.

An idea from the 1950s, a prototype in two years and money already in the bank: investors aren't buying finished technology, but a bet that the race for power for artificial intelligence will pay almost any price. Whether the ocean turns out cheaper and faster than the grid will be known at the trial voyage at the earliest.