Panthalassa’s Simple Wave‑Powered Design Revives Marine Energy
I've watched a lot of marine energy technologies come and go over the last 20 years. Ocean thermal conversion, buoys, tidal turbines, sea kites. They all failed. The mechanical stress, complexity, and cost of maintenance makes this class of technology extremely hard. While I am generally skeptical about the viability of marine energy, Panthalassa is the first company to make me pay attention in a while. @shaylekann just released a really stellar episode of @CatalystPod with Garth Sheldon-Coulson, the CEO of Panthalassa who's been quietly working on this challenge since 2016. It's one of the more fascinating AI/energy concepts I've encountered. Sheldon-Coulson describes his company as being fundamentally "about making cool shapes that do things when you put them in the water." The 85-meter steel nodes bob in deep ocean swells, and the hull shape forces water into a pressurized reservoir that drives a turbine. They call it "ocean hydro." Panthalassa's insight was fairly simple: cut the undersea cable that tethers you to land, and go far out in the ocean to where the energy actually is. The compute lives inside the node, cooled by seawater and connected to Starlink. They are designed to serve workloads that don't need low latency, like agentic coding or reinforcement learning. The O&M economics of marine energy are brutal. But these nodes are build with a solid state hull, one turbine, and power electronics with no firmware and no liquid capacitors. They can also self-propel to better resource areas and sail themselves home for maintenance. Will it work? I have no idea. The company just closed a $140 million series B led by Peter Thiel alongside a who's-who of energy/cleantech investors. The first commercial pilot will be in the water this fall. This one is worth watching.
Data Centers Must Actively Unlock Spare Capacity with Utilities
This is turning into a game of telephone. Yes, this is true *if* you can unlock spare capacity on the system creatively. This is why data centers weren't a problem historically -- because there was lots of excess capacity on...
Insider Exposes Fermi’s Hype: Project Was Never Viable
After stepping down, Fermi America's CEO was officially fired today. @CarolineBGolin knows the data center industry as well as anyone. After leaving Google, she was approached by investors who wanted to know if Fermi was legit. She told them it wasn't...
West Braces for Next Wave of Oil Rationing
Headed into month three of the oil crisis, the energy rationing that hit Asia and Africa is headed West. JPMorgan's commodity desk put out an internal memo recently that made the rounds. The Strait of Hormuz closure removed 13.7 million barrels...
Korean Investors Balk as Lutnick Fails, CEO Resigns
For months on Open Circuit, @JigarShahDC has been raising the prospect of the Koreans balking on their investment promises to Howard Lutnick. Now it looks like Lutnick couldn’t deliver for Fermi, and the CEO suddenly resigned. This March story from...
Tech Giants Turning Gas Into Emissions Highway
This Meta data center will emit more CO2 per year than its entire global footprint in 2024. Gas is no longer a bridge. It is a highway these tech companies are actively constructing.
Green
For years, green groups have hailed electrification as a core climate solution. And now that we’re suddenly in the middle of historic load growth, they’re largely unprepared to meet the moment with big ideas. “We should all be embarrassed,” says @JaneAFlegal...
Off‑grid Data Centers Spark Debate Over Grid Efficiency
There’s a growing amount of excitement and trepidation around off-grid data centers. I’m not convinced many will actually go fully off-grid -- probably as a bridge in most cases. But it’s surfacing a more interesting tension about how we build the...
Unlock Grid Capacity by Boosting Utilization, Not Expansion
The most consequential debate in AI right might be about how we use the grid. Do we need to build it as fast as possible? Or just use it better? There’s a real split forming around this: utilization vs. expansion. A new report...
Data Center Tariffs Push Utilities Toward Long-Term Commitments
If you want to understand how utilities are going to handle AI, you need to start with rate design. That’s where a lot of the real decisions are getting made. We just dug deep into 25 new data center tariffs across...
AI Shouldn't Replace Teachers Amid Teacher Pay Crisis
I am genuinely not saying this just to dunk on Melania, but this feels like one of the worst uses of AI to champion. I am a moderate AI optimist and believe it will bring all kinds of cool applications, but...
Gas Crunch Could Spur Solar‑Battery Leap in Emerging Markets
Interesting debate here between JP Morgan's Michael Cembalest and @JigarShahDC on the latest Open Circuit episode. Will the global natural gas crunch accelerate solar + batteries in emerging markets that are considering deeper investments in LNG? Michael argues that comparisons people...
Debating Grid Buildout vs Utilization: Defining Conversation Parameters
I've been watching a really interesting debate here on grid buildout vs grid utilization. This week on Open Circuit, I've got @BrianJanous and @CarolineBGolin together on the show to hash this out. Where should I focus the parameters of the...