Panthalassa, a Portland, Oregon company developing wave-powered computing systems, has raised $140 million in Series B financing. The company has spent more than a decade building a platform that captures energy from ocean waves and uses it to run AI computing onboard autonomous floating nodes at sea. Co-Founder and CEO Garth Sheldon-Coulson leads Panthalassa, which is structured as a public benefit corporation.
The energy problem behind this raise is worth understanding. Global investment in AI-focused data center infrastructure reached an estimated $580 billion in 2025 alone, and electricity grids in many regions are already feeling the strain. Data centers consumed 26% of all electricity in the state of Virginia in 2023. Beyond power, land-based facilities require large parcels of land, substantial cooling water, and permitting timelines that can stretch on for years. Panthalassa's platform avoids those constraints entirely by operating far out at sea.
The round was led by Peter Thiel. New participants include John Doerr, Marc Benioff's TIME Ventures, Max Levchin's SciFi Ventures, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Hanwha Group, Fortescue Ventures, Super Micro Computer, and Planetary VC, among others. Founders Fund, Gigascale Capital, and Lowercarbon Capital returned from prior rounds.
Ocean-based computing infrastructure is no longer a niche research concept. The global underwater data center market was valued at $3.2 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $14.8 billion by 2034, at a compound annual growth rate of 18.6%. The forces behind that growth are practical ones. Land close to population centers is scarce and expensive. Permitting timelines for new land-based facilities run long. Power grids in high-demand regions are increasingly stretched. Floating and ocean-based data centers have emerged as viable alternatives in markets where traditional options are running out of room.
What sets Panthalassa apart from other floating data center projects is its energy model. The company does not draw power from shore or connect its nodes to undersea cables. Instead, the nodes generate clean electricity directly from wave motion, then use that power onboard to run AI chips. The surrounding ocean also serves as a natural cooling system, which Panthalassa describes as free supercooling. Keeping chips cool is one of the most costly and technically demanding aspects of running a data center on land, and seawater addresses it without additional infrastructure.
"The future demands more compute than we can imagine," said Peter Thiel. "Extra-terrestrial solutions are no longer science fiction. Panthalassa has opened the ocean frontier."
The new capital has two primary destinations. First, completing a pilot manufacturing facility near Portland, Oregon. Second, advancing the deployment of the Ocean-3 node series. Panthalassa builds its nodes from plate steel in coastal factories, and refining that manufacturing process at pilot scale is essential before moving to commercial volumes. The company is targeting its first commercial deployments for 2027.
Before that, a field test. Panthalassa plans to deploy the initial Ocean-3 pilot nodes in the northern Pacific Ocean in 2026. The goal is to prove AI inference capabilities at sea and work out the details of the manufacturing process under real conditions. Inference, in simple terms, refers to a trained AI model responding to requests, such as answering questions or processing data. The company sees 2026 as the year for validating performance, and 2027 as the year for commercial scale.
"Panthalassa's autonomous wave power system is a game changer in addressing global energy needs and clean power generation," said John Doerr. "It is a triple win: workers benefit, communities benefit, and we gain a strategic asset that strengthens American technological leadership."
Panthalassa has been working on this technology for over ten years. The company tested three earlier generations of hardware at sea, the Ocean-1, Ocean-2, and Wavehopper prototypes, in 2021 and 2024. Those deployments demonstrated that the company's power generation, propulsion, autonomy, and computing systems could hold up in real ocean environments.
The Ocean-3 node operates without anchors, fuel, or cables. Floating freely in high-energy wave regions of the open ocean, each node generates clean electricity around the clock. That electricity powers onboard AI chips, which process computing tasks and send results back to land via low-Earth-orbit satellites. Low-Earth-orbit satellites orbit much closer to Earth than traditional satellites, which means data travels faster and with less delay.
"There are three sources of energy on the planet with tens of terawatts of new capacity potential: solar, nuclear, and the open ocean," said Garth Sheldon-Coulson, Co-Founder and CEO of Panthalassa. "We've built a technology platform that operates in the planet's most energy-dense wave regions, far from shore, and turns that resource into reliable clean power. We're now ready to build factories, deploy fleets, and provide a sustainable new source of energy for humanity."
The team behind the platform comes from a wide range of industries. Staff backgrounds include aerospace firms, naval architecture, defense, software development, and metal fabrication, with alumni from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Google, Boeing, and NASA, among others. Panthalassa has been incorporated as a public benefit corporation from the start.
The Series B drew capital from a broad mix of technology, clean energy, and industrial investors. Peter Thiel led the round. New investors include John Doerr, TIME Ventures (Marc Benioff), SciFi Ventures (Max Levchin), Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Hanwha Group, Anthony Pratt, Fortescue Ventures, Future Positive, WTI, Nimble Partners, Super Micro Computer, Sozo Ventures, Dylan Field, Planetary VC, Leblon Capital, Resilience Reserve, Portland Seed Fund, and the Intrepid Oregon Fund.
Returning investors include Founders Fund, Gigascale Capital, Lowercarbon Capital, Unless, and WovenEarth. The presence of returning backers alongside a large group of new investors across sectors suggests the company has built credibility with both venture capital and industrial players since its earlier raises.
