Aikido plans to test submerged data centers in Norway

While some in the tech industry have proposed launching servers into space to access continuous solar power, offshore wind developer Aikido is planning to submerge a 100-kilowatt demonstration data center off the coast of Norway this year. The small unit will live inside the submerged pods of a floating offshore wind turbine. This setup places the data center directly beneath its power source, addressing the severe power crunch facing artificial intelligence infrastructure. Because offshore winds are more consistent than onshore winds, a modest battery could bridge any lulls in power generation.

If the demonstration in Norway succeeds, the company hopes to build a larger version to deploy off the coast of the U.K. in 2028. That future model will feature a 15 megawatt to 18 megawatt turbine designed to feed a 10 megawatt to 12 megawatt data center. Operating offshore solves several physical challenges. By floating in cold seawater, cooling the servers becomes a simpler proposition compared to land-based facilities or orbital data centers, which must employ different techniques in the vacuum of space. It also eliminates local opposition from “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) groups, who often oppose onshore data centers due to noise and pollution concerns.

However, the ocean is a harsh environment that introduces new difficulties. Seawater is corrosive, requiring the container, power, and data connections to be hardened against it. Furthermore, while submerged servers are not battered by surface waves, they are not completely stationary and must be fully battened down.

Aikido’s concept follows earlier exploration by Microsoft, which first floated the idea of underwater computing over a decade ago. In 2018, Microsoft launched an experiment off the coast of Scotland, which ran for a 25-month trial with 850 servers. The trial was modestly successful, with only six of those servers failing during the period. The data hall was filled with inert nitrogen gas, which might help explain the low failure rate. Microsoft accrued several patents from the project and open-sourced them in 2021, but the company ultimately deep-sixed the submerged data center project by 2024.

Why it matters

Aikido is attempting to solve the AI data center power crunch by submerging infrastructure in the ocean, leveraging offshore wind turbines for power and seawater for natural cooling.