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An Underwater Data Center in San Francisco Bay? Regulators Say Not So Fast
The YC-backed startup NetworkOcean plans to sink GPUs into San Francisco Bay. Multiple California regulators WIRED spoke with hadn’t heard about the test—and raised concerns about its potential environmental impact.
The outreach by WIRED prompted at least two agencies—the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board—to email to NetworkOcean that testing without permits could run afoul of laws, according to public records and spokespeople for the agencies. About a year ago, he built a small web server using the DIY system Raspberry Pi to host another personal project, and temporarily floated the equipment in San Francisco Bay by attaching it to a buoy from a private boat in the Sausalito area. Shaolei Ren, a University of California, Riverside, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who’s studying the environmental impact of AI, compares plans for an underwater data center of NetworkOcean’s announced capacity, when running fully utilized, to operating about 300 bedroom space heaters.
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