{"id":59360,"date":"2026-05-06T11:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/59360\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:59:09","slug":"forget-space-data-centers-this-peter-thiel-backed-start-up-raised-millions-to-fuel-ocean-powered-compute-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/59360\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget Space Data Centers, This Peter Thiel-Backed Start Up Raised Millions To Fuel Ocean-Powered Compute System"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Peter Thiel-backed startup,\u00a0Panthalassa, has secured $140 million in a funding round aimed at propelling its AI-powered sea technology.<\/p>\n

Led by Thiel, the funding round witnessed participation from a mix of new and returning investors such as\u00a0John Doerr, Marc Benioff’s TIME\u00a0Ventures, Max Levchin’s SciFi Ventures,\u00a0and Founders Fund. The funds will be channeled towards the completion of Panthalassa\u2019s\u00a0pilot manufacturing facility near Portland.<\/p>\n

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Founded in 2016, Panthalassa is working on a technology that merges wave power generated by\u00a0floating orbs with onsite AI\u00a0computing. The systems transmit data\u00a0via low-Earth-orbit satellites.\u00a0The Oregon-based startup has spent nearly a decade developing technologies in power generation, propulsion, autonomous operations, and computing.<\/p>\n

Its co-founder and CEO, Garth Sheldon-Coulson, said that the company has developed offshore technology to harness high-energy waves into reliable, clean power, with Ocean-3 pilots launching this year and commercial rollout planned for 2027.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Thiel said, “Extra-terrestrial solutions are no longer science fiction. Panthalassa has opened the ocean frontier.”<\/p>\n

Trending: Avoid the #1 Investing Mistake: How Your \u2018Safe’ Holdings Could Be Costing You Big Time<\/a><\/p>\n

AI Race Shifts Beyond Land Limits <\/p>\n

The funding comes at a time when tech giants are exploring solutions to expand beyond land.\u00a0Last month, Meta\u00a0Platforms partnered with Overview Energy to power its data centers using space-based solar energy<\/a>. The system aims for an orbital demo by 2028 and commercial delivery by 2030, with Meta securing early access to up to 1 GW of capacity. Financial terms were not disclosed.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said space-based AI compute could become the norm within a decade, echoing ideas Elon Musk has long promoted.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on the lines of Panthalassa, China has embarked on an offshore approach to data centers, with Shanghai HiCloud Technology deploying a facility off Shanghai about 10 meters underwater, using seawater cooling to cut energy use as land-based constraints grow. Notably, the concept of subsea data centers is not new, and Microsoft Corp. tried it in 2013 with its now-shelved Project Natick. The company said it will apply insights from underwater operations, like vibration effects on servers, to future projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Peter Thiel-backed startup,\u00a0Panthalassa, has secured $140 million in a funding round aimed at propelling its AI-powered sea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[1166,35537,9563,35535,35534,228,34334,35536],"class_list":{"0":"post-59360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-peter-thiel","8":"tag-data-centers","9":"tag-john-doerr","10":"tag-marc-benioff","11":"tag-max-levchin","12":"tag-panthalassa","13":"tag-peter-thiel","14":"tag-power-generation","15":"tag-sea-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116527521058005765","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}