Building inference data centers on the high seas

About this episode

Shayle Kann interviews Garth Sheldon-Coulson about building autonomous data centers powered by wave energy in the ocean.

Amidst the increasing urgency of powering data centers, a new solution has entered the mix: send them out to sea. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO of Panthalassa. The company is building 85-meter steel "nodes" – taller than Big Ben – that it deploys into the deep ocean. These untethered, self-propelled nodes harness wave energy to power AI clusters, then beam their data back to land via satellite. The technology isn’t without its fair share of logistic complications, but it nonetheless offers a pathway to powering the AI boom that’s largely independent from grid or fuel constraints. Shayle and Garth cover topics including: - The physics and mechanics that power Panthalassa’s nodes - The significance of building an autonomous fleet - The energy generation waiting to be tapped in the open ocean - The logistics and unit economics behind scaling Panthalassa’s technology - Why deep-sea compute is well-suited for long-running workloads like inference and reinforcement learning - Catalyst: AI scaling pathways: On grid, on edge, off grid, off planet - Catalyst: How to build more hydropower - Latitude Media: Are Thiel-funded floating data centers…

People in this episode

Host: Shayle Kann

Guest: Garth Sheldon-Coulson

Topics covered

• data centers
• wave energy
• AI technology
• autonomous fleet
• logistics
• deep-sea compute

Keywords

• inference data centers
• wave energy
• AI clusters
• autonomous nodes
• logistics
• energy generation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Panthalassa, Latitude Media, Open Circuit

Places: deep ocean, Big Ben

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