Samsung and Mousterian move ahead with floating datacenter for Texas

ON-PREM

But bobbing bit barn may be becalmed by state governor's moratorium on connecting to the grid

Plans for floating datacenters in the US have advanced beyond the handshake stage, with Samsung Heavy Industries and Mousterian Corporation signing an engineering contract.

Dallas-based Mousterian, which describes itself quaintly as "a developer of water-adjacent datacenter infrastructure," says the contract covers its first project, planned for deployment in Texas.

The pair intend to deliver further bespoke moored bit barns for the US market, each delivering 50 MW of critical IT capacity.

Under the terms of the deal, Mousterian and Samsung will jointly perform the basic design, detailed engineering, and production design for their floating facilities.

The work is intended to pave the way for a definitive Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contract, with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) expected to classify the waterborne facilities.

Such facilities could avoid competition for scarce development land, be moved if necessary, and draw on the surrounding water for cooling.

Mousterian says its designs use non-evaporative cooling that consumes no potable water and releases no discharge into the surrounding waterway. It also claims that dispensing with air-cooled chillers and fans will minimize noise pollution.

Samsung floating datacenter concept Samsung Heavy Industries

Samsung Heavy Industries started getting into floating server farms earlier this year, aiming to turn its shipbuilding and offshore engineering expertise to take advantage of the high demand for datacenters.

Last month, The Register reported how the Korean giant had signed an agreement with server specialist Supermicro to conduct operational verification of AI server systems deployed in river and offshore environments, and was scoping out a date in 2028 to have its first facility operational.

The pilot with Mousterian is intended to show that floating data halls moored beside existing power plants can bring hyperscale and AI capacity online faster than conventional sites.

It is understood that the pilot site will be adjacent to an existing combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant in Houston.

"Signing this engineering contract transitions our partnership with Samsung Heavy Industries from intent to execution and gives us a clear path to scaling factory-built critical IT capacity for AI-class facilities," said Mousterian chief exec Min Suh.

"Because the facility is built in a shipyard, fabrication advances in parallel with sitework rather than after it – a schedule and scale that conventional delivery methods cannot match."

Samsung Heavy Industries CEO Sung-an Choi said that waterborne server farms are a natural extension of the engineering capabilities the firm has honed over five decades in offshore and maritime construction.

"Together with Mousterian, we intend to deliver floating datacenters with the same rigor, quality, and schedule certainty that define our maritime track record," he added.

But the pair may run into a snag. Texas governor Greg Abbott this week paused approvals for datacenter projects seeking access to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid until state regulators audit their connection requests.

ERCOT is considering requests for more than 474 GW of new connections, over five times the state's peak electricity demand, Abbott says. Datacenters account for 90 percent of those requests.

Under his direction, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and ERCOT are seeking information from those projects, such as whether they are providing their own power or dependent on the grid, and their expected water consumption.

Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by PUCT and ERCOT will be denied a connection. ®