Project Natick

A research project to determine the feasibility of subsea datacenters powered by offshore renewable energy.

The cloud, under the sea.

50% of us live near the coast. Why doesn’t our data?

Project Natick explores the benefits and difficulties of deploying subsea datacenters worldwide. Phase 2 extended this research with a full-scale, renewable-energy-powered datacenter module in the North Sea.

The Northern Isles pressure vessel ready to move to the deployment site.

Phase 2 results

Stopwatch with a checkmark.

Reliability

Servers in Natick Northern Isles showed a failure rate one-eighth that of the land-based control group.

Globe with location pins.

Community service

Natick supported COVID-19 research for Folding at Home and World Community Grid.

Recycling symbol.

Recycling

The steel pressure vessel, heat exchangers, servers, and all other components will be recycled.

Sun over the ocean.

Sea bed

The sea bed is being restored to the same state it was in before deployment.

Contact

General inquiries: natick@microsoft.com
Media inquiries: natick-media@microsoft.com

A crab crawls along the Leona Philpot pressure vessel, with the Microsoft logo in the background.