Samsung Heavy Industries and the U.S.-based Mousterian Corporation have signed an engineering contract to develop their first floating data center in the United States. This marks the first time a concept that has primarily existed on drawing boards and in letters of intent over the past few years is being given concrete technical implementation.
The agreement follows a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that both companies signed in April. While that primarily laid the groundwork for collaboration, the new contract marks the start of the actual engineering work. The project focuses on specially designed, permanently moored floating data centers, each expected to deliver 50 MW of IT capacity. The first installations are planned for Texas and other U.S. regions.
During the engineering phase, the companies will collaborate on the basic design, detailed engineering, and production design. This work is expected to ultimately lead to a definitive EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) contract, after which construction can begin. The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) is expected to be responsible for classifying the floating structures.
According to Mousterian and Samsung Heavy Industries, the data centers will not be placed on the open sea but will be permanently moored next to existing power plants and maritime infrastructure. According to The Register, the first pilot site is expected to be located next to an existing combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant in Houston. The companies aim to utilize available electricity capacity more quickly than in traditional, land-based data centers.
AI data centers from the shipyard
The design is specifically tailored to AI infrastructure. The facilities are intended to support liquid-cooled AI servers and to utilize a non-evaporative water-cooling system. According to the initiators, this requires no drinking water, and no process water is discharged into the environment. By eliminating the need for large air-cooled chillers and fans, noise pollution should also be minimized.
A key part of the concept is that the data centers will be built in a shipyard. This allows for the simultaneous on-site fabrication of the modules and preparatory work, thereby shortening the overall completion time.
Meanwhile, Samsung Heavy Industries is also working on the concept’s IT infrastructure. Last month, the company partnered with server supplier Supermicro to test AI servers in floating data centers for river and offshore environments. Samsung expressed its ambition to commission the first operational facility by 2028, according to The Register.
Grid capacity remains an uncertainty
Although the project is making technical progress, electricity availability is not yet a foregone conclusion. This week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a temporary moratorium on new data center projects seeking connection to the ERCOT power grid.
According to Abbott, ERCOT is currently processing requests for more than 474 GW of new connections, more than five times the state’s current peak demand. Approximately 90 percent of those requests come from data centers. Texas regulators are therefore investigating which projects will actually be built, how much power they will require, and to what extent they have their own generation capacity. Projects that do not comply with the new information requests risk losing their grid connection.
This means that even innovative concepts such as floating data centers ultimately depend on electricity availability. That is precisely why Samsung Heavy Industries and Mousterian have chosen to locate their first facilities next to existing power plants, so that the distance between power generation and IT capacity is kept as short as possible.