Panthalassa, a renewable energy and ocean technology company, has raised $140 million in Series B financing led by Peter Thiel, with participation from a broad group of new and returning investors including John Doerr, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Max Levchin’s SciFi Ventures, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Hanwha Group, Fortescue Ventures, Super Micro Computer, and others, alongside returning backers Founders Fund, Gigascale Capital, and Lowercarbon Capital.
The funding will complete the company’s pilot manufacturing facility near Portland, Oregon, and accelerate deployment of its Ocean-3 series of nodes, which will perform AI inference computing at sea using electricity generated from ocean waves. The company plans to deploy Ocean-3 pilot nodes in the northern Pacific Ocean in 2026 before moving to commercial deployments in 2027. Panthalassa is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon.
Panthalassa’s technology converts ocean wave energy directly into electricity onboard autonomous floating nodes, then uses that power to run AI chips performing inference computations, transmitting results to land via low-Earth-orbit satellite. The surrounding ocean provides free supercooling, addressing one of the most significant engineering challenges in conventional land-based data centers — the cost and complexity of thermal management — while also extending chip lifetimes. Nodes are mass-produced from plate steel at coastal factories, designed for deployment in the most energy-dense wave regions far from shore. The company has spent a decade developing its core power generation, propulsion, autonomy, and at-sea computing technologies, with Ocean-1, Ocean-2, and Wavehopper prototypes deployed at sea in 2021 and 2024.
The investment thesis rests on a structural argument about the constraints facing terrestrial data centers: limited grid capacity, cooling water scarcity, supply chain bottlenecks, permitting delays, and community impacts are collectively slowing the expansion of AI computing infrastructure on land. Panthalassa’s approach bypasses each of these constraints by operating in international waters, avoiding land-use permitting, using seawater for cooling, and generating its own power from a renewable source with high capacity factors in appropriate wave regions. Co-Founder and CEO Garth Sheldon-Coulson described the open ocean as one of three energy sources on the planet with tens of terawatts of new capacity potential alongside solar and nuclear.
The Series B positions Panthalassa to move from prototype validation to initial commercial operation, with Peter Thiel’s lead investment providing both capital and the credibility signal that often accompanies deep tech investments requiring patient capital for long development timelines.
KEY QUOTES:
“There are three sources of energy on the planet with tens of terawatts of new capacity potential: solar, nuclear, and the open ocean. 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.”
Garth Sheldon-Coulson, Co-Founder and CEO, Panthalassa
“The future demands more compute than we can imagine. Extra-terrestrial solutions are no longer science fiction. Panthalassa has opened the ocean frontier.”
Peter Thiel, Lead Investor
