# Floating Data Center Could Supply AI Compute, Power and Fresh Water > Source: > Published: 2026-09-08 15:54:06+00:00 A proposed floating AI data center would generate up to 100MW of power at sea, using 60MW for AI computing while delivering as much as 40MW of electricity to shore. While still in the planning phase, the project offers some major potential upgrades over land-based data centers. The vessel, dubbed the Blue Economy VITAL 100 MW Kraaken, would produce 7.9 million gallons of fresh water per day. Optimal Transit, the vessel’s developer, says Kraaken’s 40MW of exported electricity could power about 32,000 homes, while its daily water production could serve an estimated 150,000 people. [Optimal Transit](https://optimaltransit.com/) is a partnership between marine engineering firm InMar Technologies and energy systems developer OptiFuel Systems. The companies are proposing Kraaken as an alternative to land-based data centers that require large amounts of electricity and water. Kraaken would generate its own power rather than depend on the electrical grid. Optimal Transit’s patented Digital Ocean Thermal (DOT) engine is based on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), which generates electricity by exploiting the temperature difference between warm water near the ocean surface and much colder water at greater depths. The vessel would also use its thermal infrastructure for desalination. Its vacuum-flash system would boil seawater under low pressure and then use cold seawater to condense the vapor into fresh water. Kraaken would be able to travel across water. The vessel uses a Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull design intended to provide greater stability at sea. Optimal Transit says it could disconnect from its offshore mooring within hours and travel at speeds approaching 16 knots to avoid severe weather. ### **Big Plans and Big Challenges** Kraaken remains a proposed platform, and its most ambitious capabilities have not been demonstrated at full scale. OTEC itself is established science, but extracting large amounts of electricity from modest differences in ocean temperature presents major engineering challenges. One problem is the sheer amount of seawater involved. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that a conventional 100MW OTEC plant could move 10 billion to 20 billion gallons of seawater per day. Such a system could require a cold-water pipe roughly 33 feet across extending about 3,300 feet below the surface. Optimal Transit says its DOT technology could reduce the required cold-water pipe size by about 70%. But the company has not yet publicly detailed how Kraaken’s deep-water intake would operate with a vessel designed to disconnect from its mooring and move during severe weather. There is also a question about Kraaken’s 100MW power budget. While the proposed 60MW for computing plus 40MW exported to shore account for the entire 100MW, desalination, seawater pumps and the vessel’s other systems also need electricity. Optimal Transit has not released a detailed breakdown for these additional loads. Optimal Transit estimates a VITAL vessel would cost about $587 million and take approximately three years to deploy. The company estimates that separately building comparable power generation, desalination and AI data center infrastructure on land would cost between $750 million and $1.33 billion and take six to 10 years. For now, those figures remain projections. The company has said that early funding would support engineering work and digital-twin validation of its DOT technology, while production plans depend on a proposed Series B funding round in 2027. ### **Other Offshore Data Center Projects** The Kraaken project is just the latest entrant in a water-based data center sector that has seen significant early interest. China’s $226 million wind-powered underwater data center in Shanghai began full commercial operations in May 2026. The facility uses seawater for cooling and reportedly consumes at least 30% less electricity than conventional data centers. Another offshore project is under development in Singapore, where infrastructure company Keppel started building a four-story floating data center this year. Scheduled to open in 2028, the facility will use seawater for cooling, reducing its reliance on treated water. Microsoft tested a model with Project Natick, placing a sealed data center with 864 servers on the seafloor near Scotland’s Orkney Islands in 2018. After two years, Microsoft reported that the submerged servers failed at about one-eighth the rate of comparable land-based systems. It is not clear why the company ended the project in 2024, but some industry observers have pointed to the difficulties of upgrading hardware in underwater environments, or perhaps permitting issues were challenging.