Exascale Labs Partners With EnergyBank On Floating Wind Data Center Pilot In Norway

AI data center developer Exascale Labs has partnered with energy storage firm EnergyBank to explore AI data centers powered by floating offshore wind and long-duration battery storage. Under a non-binding MoU, the companies will develop an initial pilot with Zephyros-One, a 2.3MW floating wind turbine off Norway’s coast. Known as Hywind Demo, the project began operations in 2009 and was developed by Equinor before being acquired by Zephyros in 2019.

“AI infrastructure growth is not constrained by the lack of availability of advanced chips. Rather, it is due to the inability to secure and deliver power at the required scale and within commercially viable timelines,” said Hoansoo Lee, CEO of Exascale. “Our modular platform is purpose-built to operate off-grid, which means floating offshore wind farms by EnergyBank’s technology can deliver compute-ready power without waiting years for a grid connection.”

The pilot is expected to provide 800kW of off-grid capacity using an Exascale modular data center integrating GPU servers, power distribution, UPS batteries, switchboards, and management systems. The project aims to create a repeatable model for future deployments, with plans for up to 10MW of compute capacity per turbine. EnergyBank expects to fund the pilot through private investment and potential public funding.

“As AI workloads grow denser, reliable power access has become the binding constraint on new data center capacity. By taking floating wind off-grid and integrating generation, storage and modular data centers into a single system, we can turn variable offshore power into firm, high-value compute without waiting years for a grid connection. Wind developers gain a direct route to market, compute operators gain access to new power capacity, and the overall project can capture substantially more value from the same energy asset,” said Tim Hawkey, CEO of EnergyBank.