Status: Quiet — no confirmed deployment ever; SF Bay plan effectively killed by regulators in 2024. The segment's case study in what happens when you skip permitting.
Founded 2023 by Sam Mendel and Eric Kim (both 23 at launch, met in 9th-grade robotics). Y Combinator S24, ~4 people, SF-based. Launch plan (Aug 2024): sink a 500 kW capsule into San Francisco Bay "within a month," offering 2,048 Nvidia H100s at ≤$2.10/GPU/hr. Claims: 30% energy reduction, zero water use, 4-month deployment.
~$500K total (Y Combinator + BullMont Capital, 2024). No follow-on found.
They sought no permits from any agency. Wired's reporting (Sep 2024) surprised the regulators themselves; the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the Regional Water Quality Control Board then warned that unpermitted testing could violate state law, with fines up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mendel argued the test site was "privately owned" bay water exempt from permitting — a regulator called that "absurd" (bay bottom is largely public trust). Scientists flagged that even small heat/disturbance could trigger toxic algae blooms. The only prior test on record: a Raspberry Pi web server floated on a buoy near Sausalito.
No evidence the SF Bay test — or any capsule deployment anywhere — ever happened. No follow-up press in 2025–2026.
Alive on paper (YC directory: Active). The website now leads with floating barges "scalable to 200 MW+" alongside capsules — a pivot toward the surface, which dodges the submersion-permitting problem (though Google's barge history says surface permitting isn't free either). No deployments, locations, or customers listed.
Same lesson as Google barges, sharper: in US coastal waters the permitting question isn't a detail, it's the business. A YC-speed "ship in a month" motion is structurally incompatible with public-trust waters, and the algae-bloom/thermal objections give regulators standing even at 500 kW scale.
Wired story (GeoGarage mirror) · DCD: SF Bay test plan · YC company page · YC launch post · Tracxn funding · networkocean.io