Offshore infrastructure provider Aikido Technologies recently unveiled AO60DC, a floating offshore wind platform designed to co-locate AI-grade computers with floating wind generation and integrated battery storage.
Designed for farms consisting of 30 MW to more than 1GW of IT load, the technology offers a pathway to sovereign, gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure built directly at the source of renewable energy, solving rapid growth in demand for high-density AI infrastructure.
“Before we go off-world, we should go offshore,” said Sam Kanner, CEO of Aikido Technologies. “First movers in the O&G industry exploited deep-water resources over 40 years ago and reaped massive benefits. Aikido is well positioned to integrate proven, offshore components with typical data hall construction techniques to build GW-scale AI factories faster, cleaner, cheaper and more efficiently than conventional techniques.”
Developers find it increasingly difficult to obtain energy, land, and water to build such mega-campuses, especially close to load centers. Offshore, however, energy, cooling, and space are abundant, and the ocean acts as an infinite heat sink. Around the world, areas pre-designated for floating wind deployments can instead be immediately used for data centers.
The onboard wind turbine and BESS are designed to power the compute load for the majority of operating hours, with a grid connection used primarily during summer months. Batteries can also be charged ahead of grid stress events, which can shorten effective grid connection timelines for new capacity. The units can be deployed within 200 miles (<10ms RTT) of major compute load centers in sovereign waters, allowing many energy-constrained countries to deploy AI infrastructure.
By combining Aikido’s proprietary wind-turbine substructure and the data center enclosure into a single steel unit, the design will reduce both capital and operating costs while simplifying integration. The data halls can be pre-fabricated in a factory and lifted into place during the final integration.
At the core of the concept is Aikido’s modular “flat-pack” semi-submersible floating platform, which can be assembled up to 10 times faster than conventional offshore structures. The approach is intended to support accelerated deployment timelines for AI and energy infrastructure. Semi-submersible offshore platforms are the most universal and proven offshore platform type, with O&G and floating wind operators deploying such platforms for 25-plus years. The units can be installed and serviced using vessels already active in offshore wind and deep-water O&G industries, enabling maintenance response times comparable to conventional data centers.
The platforms can be manned for days at a time to ensure individual servers have uptime that meet the typical standards in the datacenter industry. The integrated data halls are also engineered to provide the highest level of physical security.
A proof-of-concept unit is under development in Norway and is scheduled for deployment later this year. Aikido is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program, and the company has received early interest from AI inference customers.
The first commercial project is targeted for the U.K., with a planned operational date of 2028.
More info www.aikidotechnologies.com
