Stockton, California, USA (Nautilus floating barge data centre)
#00221
Case study of
#00212 Relocate compute into submerged or floating offshore modules cooled by seawater
Implementer
Nautilus Data Technologies
Timeline
Since Jan 1, 2021
Location
Description
Nautilus Data Technologies commissioned a Tier III certified floating barge data centre on the Stockton, California waterway in 2021, providing 6.5 MW of critical IT load across ~20,000 sq ft at rack densities around 55 kW per rack, using river water for cooling. The facility reached ~86% leased occupancy. Despite technical success, Nautilus exited data centre operations, listed the barge for sale at $45 million, and pivoted to licensing its EcoCore cooling technology. Planned additional barges were never built and were described as requiring a partner. Note: Chapter 11 filings under "Nautilus Holdings" refer to an unrelated shipping company — Nautilus Data Technologies exited operations voluntarily.
Metrics
5Funding
Lessons learned
- A working facility at 86% occupancy was still not a viable business: occupancy and technical performance alone are insufficient indicators that a novel deployment model is replicable at scale.
- The cooling technology survived as a licensable product while the floating deployment model did not — when evaluating a novel siting approach, determine separately whether the operator believes in the technology versus the deployment vehicle.
- Waterfront and marine siting introduces permitting, floodplain, and marine-use constraints absent from conventional land-based facilities; these costs and delays are rarely captured in upfront comparisons.
- The only operating US floating data centre being listed for sale is a concrete data point for due diligence on any new offshore or floating platform proposal, most of which remain at pre-prototype stage.
Documented Jul 28, 2026