Power-Barge Firm Plans Floating Data Centers to Meet AI Demand

The Karmol LNGT Powership Asia floating storage and regasification unit, operated by Karpowership in Cape Town.Photographer: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg

Karpowership, a Turkish company that builds floating power plants, is expanding into waterborne data centers in a bet they’ll be faster to build than onshore hubs as demand from artificial intelligence soars.

The firm’s Kinetics unit plans to develop some of the world’s first floating data centers in shipyards, sidestepping the permitting bottlenecks that can hold up onshore construction in key markets such as the US, Chief Executive Officer Mehmet Katmer said in an interview.