Samsung and Mousterian announced a floating datacenter concept for Texas deployment but face moratorium hurdles on grid interconnection.
Plans for floating datacenters in the US have advanced beyond the initial concept stage, with Samsung Heavy Industries and Mousterian Corporation signing an engineering contract. Dallas-based Mousterian, which describes itself as "a developer of water-adjacent datacenter infrastructure," says the contract covers its first project, planned for deployment in Texas.
The two companies intend to deliver 50 MW of critical IT capacity per facility, with plans for further bespoke moored datacenters across the US market. Under the terms of the deal, Mousterian and Samsung will jointly perform the basic design, detailed engineering, and production design for their floating facilities, with the work intended to pave the way for a definitive Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contract. The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) is expected to classify the waterborne facilities.
Floating datacenters offer several potential advantages: they avoid competition for scarce development land, can be relocated if necessary, and leverage surrounding water for cooling. Mousterian's designs employ non-evaporative cooling that consumes no potable water and releases no discharge into the surrounding waterway. The company also claims that eliminating air-cooled chillers and fans will minimize noise pollution.
Samsung Heavy Industries entered the floating server farm space earlier this year, leveraging its shipbuilding and offshore engineering expertise to capitalize on high demand for datacenter capacity. Last month, the Korean company signed an agreement with server specialist Supermicro to conduct operational verification of AI server systems deployed in river and offshore environments, with an operational target date of 2028 for its first facility.
The pilot with Mousterian aims to demonstrate that floating data halls moored adjacent to existing power plants can accelerate hyperscale and AI capacity deployment compared to conventional sites. The pilot site will be located beside an existing combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant in Houston.
Mousterian CEO Min Suh said: "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. 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 added that waterborne server farms represent a natural extension of the firm's offshore and maritime engineering capabilities developed over five decades. "Together with Mousterian, we intend to deliver floating datacenters with the same rigor, quality, and schedule certainty that define our maritime track record," he said.
However, the partnership faces a potential obstacle. Texas Governor Greg Abbott this week paused approvals for datacenter projects seeking access to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid pending a state audit of their connection requests. ERCOT is currently considering requests for more than 474 GW of new connections—over five times the state's peak electricity demand, according to Abbott. Datacenters account for 90 percent of those requests.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and ERCOT are now seeking information from projects applying for grid connections, including whether they will provide their own power or depend on the grid, and their expected water consumption. Any project that fails to meet the requirements established by PUCT and ERCOT will be denied a connection.