UBS believes that power shortages, difficulty in finding suitable land, and public opposition to water usage, noise, and electricity consumption are hindering the construction of AI data centers. Floating data centers could alleviate these problems: utilizing idle coastal base power or offshore energy, reducing land use, and leveraging deep-sea water for improved cooling efficiency. Construction time could be shortened to 18-24 months, compared to approximately 3 years for traditional land-based facilities. UBS presents a scenario: if floating data centers can capture 1% of the 69 gigawatts of new data center capacity projected for the US between 2028 and 2030, this corresponds to approximately 0.7 gigawatts of demand, representing a potential market exceeding $5 billion for shipyards.
However, this opportunity is difficult to accurately assess because floating data centers have not yet been deployed on a large scale commercially. When orders will materialize and the actual size of the market remain unclear.
