Dallas-based Mousterian Corp. Inc. (M3) and South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. (SHI) have signed an engineering contract for their first moored floating data center (FDC) in the United States. M3 develops water-adjacent data center infrastructure, and SHI is one of the world’s largest shipbuilders and maritime engineering firms.

“Signing this engineering contract transitions our partnership with Samsung Heavy Industries from intent to execution and gives us a clear path to scaling factory-built critical IT capacity for AI-class facilities,” M3 CEO Min Suh said in a statement.

The contract kicks off the first official project under the strategic cooperation framework announced by M3 and SHI in April 2026, when M3 emerged from stealth. The pilot is designed to show that floating data centers moored next to existing power plants can speed the delivery of hyperscale and AI compute. The companies said the approach taps generation capacity beyond the reach of conventional land-based sites.

By deploying compute “on barges adjacent to these assets,” Suh said in April, M3 and SHI can compress development timelines “from years to quarters” and turn on data hall capacity that’s needed today.

Removing constraints and adding sustainability

Via LinkedIn, Mousterian posted: “AI compute is constrained by three things: land, power, and water. Floating data centers address all three.”

Mousterian said the FDC design also emphasizes sustainability and speed of delivery. Each facility uses bulk non-evaporative cooling that consumes no potable water and emits no process discharge to the surrounding waterway.

The centers also support facility-scale, high-density, liquid-cooled AI compute at a low power usage effectiveness (PUE), the company said. Because the design doesn’t require the air-cooled chillers and fans of conventional data centers, the facilities operate more quietly and cut noise for surrounding communities.

More on the contract

Under the engineering contract, M3 and SHI will partner in basic design, detailed engineering and production design for purpose-built moored FDC units, each delivering 50 megawatts of critical IT capacity, the companies said. The centers are planned for deployment in Texas and other key U.S. markets.

The engineering program sets the technical foundation for a final Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract, which the parties said they plan to sign during or after the engineering work is finished. The American Bureau of Shipping is expected to act as the project’s classification society.

“We are jointly engineering the first mission-critical data center of its class to be fabricated off-site to shipyard standards,” Suh said. “Because the facility is built in a shipyard, fabrication advances in parallel with sitework rather than after it — a schedule and scale that conventional delivery methods cannot match.”

He said that by locating facilities next to both existing stranded baseload generation and maritime infrastructure, “we reach power that land-based development cannot.”

Startup joining forces with maritime powerhouse

The engineering work combines M3’s broader development platform — covering site selection, power partnerships, data center design, financing, and tenant relationships — with SHI’s large‑scale expertise in engineering, building and delivering floating maritime assets, the companies said.

“Floating data centers are a natural extension of the engineering, fabrication, and project delivery capabilities we have built over five decades in offshore and maritime construction,” said Sung-an Choi, vice chairman and CEO of Samsung Heavy Industries, in a statement. “Together with Mousterian, we intend to deliver floating data centers with the same rigor, quality, and schedule certainty that define our maritime track record.”

Founded in 1974, SHI has a U.S. office in Houston. SHI designs and delivers a wide range of vessels and floating offshore assets. These include everything from liquefied natural gas carriers to drillships to floating production platforms for customers around the world.

Looking forward to ‘100s of IT megawatts’

Suh co-founded M3 with chief design and technical officer Chase Ott-Wick, who worked on the world’s first floating data center prototype as part of Nautilus Data Technologies.

According to the company website, M3 currently has a hybrid land-water site under development in Houston adjacent to a combined-cycle gas turbine power plant. Suh told Dallas Innovates that the company is focusing on Houston and other sites along the Texas Gulf Coast for future floating data centers.

In a LinkedIn post announcing the agreement, Suh said, “Every decision we’ve made as a team (including mooring to power units on land) draws from prior experience delivering customer IT capacity, marine experience, and the first floating data center build delivered by the team back in the day.”

He said he and his team “can’t wait to see the blinking lights on the first of many 100s of IT megawatts.”

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