Offshore Data Center and Riverway Announce Partnership for Gas-Powered Offshore Data Center Platforms

Offshore Data Center LLC and Riverway Group have announced a partnership to design and construct offshore data center platforms intended to use stranded or undervalued natural gas directly at the source.

The proposed architecture colocates power generation with modular, liquid-cooled GPU and CPU systems. Offshore Data Center describes a range of concepts, including total-project configurations of up to 1 GW for large-scale AI training, alongside smaller and potentially faster-to-deploy systems for edge and inference workloads. The 1 GW figure is a conceptual upper-end capacity, not the capacity of a confirmed operating or under-construction facility.

The platform design is expected to use semisubmersible hulls developed by Horton do Brasil, combined with Riverway Group's automated welding and fabrication methods. The companies say the resulting hull could be up to 50% lighter than conventional designs, although this is a company claim that has not been independently verified in the available source material.

The concept also incorporates a closed-loop deep-ocean-water cooling system. The companies cite cooling as potentially accounting for up to 40% of a data center's energy use, positioning marine cooling as a central element of the proposed operating model rather than a conventional land-based cooling plant.

Construction is targeted at the U.S. Gulf Coast. The stated objective is to monetize gas that is undeveloped, reinjected, or uneconomic to move ashore through conventional channels. This could represent an integrated offshore model in which gas supply, local generation, cooling, and AI compute are deployed within one asset.

Commercial relevance will depend on whether the concept progresses beyond the partnership stage. No final investment decision, construction start, commissioned platform, identified customer, project CAPEX, gas supply parameters, or delivery schedule has been disclosed.