The key facts
- Drogue, founded six months ago in Washington, raised $20 million from XYZ Venture Capital, Toyota Ventures, and other investors
- The first prototype, on a converted vessel, is expected to go to sea in early 2028
- OTEC technology uses the temperature difference between surface and deep water to generate electricity
Floating data centers powered by the ocean's heat
Drogue, a startup that has so far stayed out of the public eye, is developing a system that extracts heat from the ocean to power data centers housed on floating vessels. According to co-founder and CEO Sam Saep, the first prototype should be operating in the ocean in less than two years. TechCrunch reports on the company and its plans.
Money and timelines
Drogue was founded just six months ago in Washington and, according to figures the company provided to the publication, has already raised $20 million. Investors include XYZ Venture Capital, Toyota Ventures, Tamarack Global, Dream, FDVC, Garuda Ventures, Flexcap, Boost VC, and Slow Ventures. In that time, the company has designed a multi-megawatt prototype that will be installed on a conventional ocean-going vessel and sent to sea in early 2028; subsequent versions will be built on floating structures resembling offshore oil platforms.
Why the AI market needs this
Saep explains the concept by pointing to the mismatch between the pace of AI demand growth and traditional data center construction timelines. According to him, the data center industry is a 'real estate game' with horizons of 8–10 years, including negotiations with utilities and regional grid operators, whereas AI-driven demand has grown tenfold in just the last three years. The idea is similar to Elon Musk's plan for orbital data centers — placing computing next to a cheap source of energy — but Drogue doesn't need expensive rockets: it's enough to send a ship out to sea.
How the technology works
At its core is ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), developed back in the 1950s: the system works like a heat pump in reverse, using the temperature difference to generate electricity. Warm surface water first cools the data center, then is used to boil ammonia, whose vapor spins a turbine. After the turbine, the gas condenses, and cold water raised from a depth of 1,000 meters absorbs heat in the condenser before being discharged back at the same depth. Saep claims that the extracted heat cannot destroy the temperature gradient: at the surface, the water is heated by the sun, while at depth it averages around 4 °C.
Why now
The basic idea was tested in the 1980s but was shelved. Saep interviewed participants in those early projects and, according to him, everyone agreed that the technology works — the problem was raising enough capital to build a facility at the necessary scale. He notes that pipe and heat exchanger manufacturing technologies have changed since then. The economics of the scheme are driven by the customers themselves: transmitting power to shore would require expensive cables, while delivering data from the platform is extremely cheap, so data centers turned out to be the ideal consumer. Each vessel is expected to remain at sea for about ten years.
The scale of the resource and current status
According to a study cited by the publication, due to warming, the oceans absorb an additional 5.8 million terawatt-hours of energy per year, while all of humanity consumes about 180,000 terawatt-hours annually. Drogue has already received 'approval in principle' from the American Bureau of Shipping, which sets safety standards for vessels, and is now selecting the first ship for building the prototype. Uncertainty remains: the system's operability in the open ocean will only be confirmed by the future prototype, and the company is not disclosing commercial timelines beyond 2028.
