Samsung Heavy Industries and Mousterian Corporation have moved their partnership from framework to active execution, signing an engineering contract to jointly develop purpose-built moored floating data centers for the United States market, with each facility designed to deliver 50 megawatts of critical IT capacity.

From Framework to Execution

The engineering contract was executed at a signing ceremony held on July 22, 2026, and publicly announced on August 3, 2026.

It represents the first definitive project agreement under a strategic cooperation framework that Mousterian Corporation and Samsung Heavy Industries originally announced in April 2026.

The ceremony was attended by Min Suh, Chief Executive Officer of Mousterian Corporation, and Sung-an Choi, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Samsung Heavy Industries.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will jointly perform basic design, detailed engineering, and production design for purpose-built moored floating data center units.

The engineering program is structured to establish the technical baseline for a definitive Engineering, Procurement, and Construction contract, which the parties intend to execute upon or prior to completion of the engineering works. The American Bureau of Shipping is expected to serve as classification society for the project.

Texas and Key U.S. Markets Targeted

The pilot deployment is planned for Texas and other key U.S. markets.

Mousterian Corporation, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, describes itself as a developer of water-adjacent data center infrastructure whose platform pairs proprietary floating data center designs with development, power pipeline, capital formation, and tenant relationships across the hyperscale and AI compute sectors.

The company states its leadership includes the team behind what it characterizes as the world's first operational floating data center, alongside senior executives drawn from data center design, delivery, operations, infrastructure policy, and capital markets.

The pilot deployment is designed to demonstrate that purpose-built floating data centers, sited adjacent to existing power generation assets, can compress delivery timelines for hyperscale and AI compute by unlocking generation capacity beyond what is accessible to conventional land-based sites.

Shipyard Fabrication as a Schedule Advantage

A central argument behind the floating data center concept, as articulated by the companies, is the construction methodology enabled by shipyard fabrication.

Because the facility is built in a shipyard, the companies state that fabrication can advance in parallel with sitework rather than sequentially after it, a dynamic they say conventional delivery methods cannot replicate.

"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," said Min Suh, Chief Executive Officer of Mousterian Corporation.

"We are jointly engineering the first mission-critical data center of its class to be fabricated off-site to shipyard standards. 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. And by siting these facilities alongside existing stranded baseload generation and maritime infrastructure, we reach power that land-based development cannot."

Samsung Heavy Industries, founded in 1974 and headquartered in Seongnam, South Korea, is described as one of the world's largest shipbuilders and a leader in offshore and maritime engineering.

The company designs and delivers vessels and floating offshore assets including LNG carriers, drillships, FPSOs, and floating production platforms.

"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 Chief Executive Officer of Samsung Heavy Industries.

"Together with Mousterian, we intend to deliver floating data centers with the same rigor, quality, and schedule certainty that define our maritime track record."

Sustainability and Environmental Design

The facility design incorporates several environmental and sustainability features.

Each floating data center employs bulk non-evaporative cooling that the companies say consumes no potable water and returns zero process discharge to the surrounding waterway.

The design also supports facility-scale, high-density, liquid-cooled AI compute at a low power usage effectiveness rating. Because the design eliminates the air-cooled chillers and fans that dominate conventional data center configurations, the companies state that each facility operates with a minimal noise profile, which they describe as a meaningful reduction in noise pollution for surrounding communities.

Power Access at the Core of the Strategy

A recurring theme in both the contract structure and the companies' public statements is the challenge of power access for AI and hyperscale compute infrastructure.

The floating data center model is positioned explicitly around the concept of siting facilities adjacent to existing stranded baseload generation and maritime infrastructure, reaching power resources that the companies say land-based development cannot access through conventional means.

The engineering contract builds on Mousterian Corporation's broader development platform, which the company describes as spanning site origination, power partnerships, data center design, capital formation, and tenant relationships.

On the fabrication and delivery side, the agreement draws on Samsung Heavy Industries' engineering capabilities for floating maritime assets developed across more than five decades of offshore and shipbuilding operations.

The parties have stated their intent to execute a full EPC contract upon or prior to completion of the current engineering works, moving the project toward production-stage deployment in the U.S. market.