Your data centre is a heat plant that has not been told yet.
Coral treats heat offtake as a productised commercial instrument rather than a sustainability claim, and designs the thermal path backwards from the offtaker. Waste heat has no value; contracted heat does. Coral productises the difference with a standard heat supply agreement, a thermal buffer that makes supply firm regardless of GPU utilisation, and a financing structure under which the heat host contributes no capital.
Waste heat has no value. Contracted heat does. The difference between the two is proximity to a demand, a temperature grade the demand can use, and a contract that makes supply firm. Coral productises all three: a standard heat supply agreement, a thermal buffer that makes supply firm regardless of GPU utilisation, and a financing structure under which the heat host contributes no capital.
Why now, and not five years ago
A previous-generation loop returning water at 30 C is thermally worthless to almost every offtaker. A current-generation loop returning at 55 C is directly usable for space heating, domestic hot water, swimming pools, horticulture and low-grade process heat, and is a viable heat pump source for industrial steam.
The hardware generation changed the economics. Published guidance from the leading AI silicon vendor states that its newest generation servers operate at up to 45 C coolant inlet, with coolant leaving the chips at roughly 55 C.
Who buys heat
| Offtaker | Demand grade | Load profile |
|---|---|---|
| Hospitals | Space heating and domestic hot water | Continuous, year round |
| Universities and schools | Space heating, pools, domestic hot water | High in term time, strong in winter |
| Leisure centres and pools | Pool and domestic hot water | Continuous, year round |
| District heating networks | Space heating | Seasonal, high winter demand |
| Horticulture and greenhouses | Low-grade continuous heat | Continuous, highest in winter, and the best-matched offtaker the industry ignores |
| Food processing and distilleries | Low-grade process heat, or steam via heat pump | Continuous during production |
| Aquaculture | Low-grade continuous heat | Continuous |
The firmness problem, stated honestly
Heat output follows GPU utilisation. No offtaker will sign a supply agreement for heat that is only available when the GPUs are busy.
Coral's answer is a thermal buffer sized to the offtake contract, which decouples heat delivery from workload and simultaneously provides cooling ride-through during short power interruptions at sites with weak grids. Buffer sizing as a function of workload volatility is one of Coral's published open research questions.
Where Coral is today
The shipping pods do not yet expose a standardised, metered heat offtake interface, and at the current typical oil temperature the available heat grade would not be worth much if they did. Both are Gen 2 commitments, and they are the same commitment: the loop temperature strategy is what makes the offtake interface worth building.
Coral publishes its position rather than its ambition.
Siting
Coral weights proximity to a heat offtaker equally with power availability and connectivity when selecting a site. A Coral pod sited next to a heat demand is not a lower-carbon data centre. It is a decarbonisation asset for the host building, and it appears on their balance sheet as one.
Ask for the water and heat position for your site
Whether dry heat rejection is viable across a full annual cycle, and whether a credible heat offtaker sits within an economic pipe run, are site-specific questions answered during the architecture review.