Sunlight In. Electricity,
Clean Water, and AI
Out.
Fans running. Lights on for homework after dark. A phone charging. The local shop staying open into the evening. Clean water pulled straight from the air. All of it — plus a locally hosted AI health and education assistant — comes from a single unit about the size of a shipping container, powered entirely by the sun.
LiquidStar's Waypoints are solar-powered micro data centers already delivering electricity, drinking water, internet, and AI-powered services to communities that have never had them — and paying for themselves while they do it.
How it works
One Waypoint: sunlight in → electricity, water, internet, and AI out
How Liquidstar's solar-powered micro data centers deliver off-grid electrification, clean water, internet, and AI infrastructure to communities that never had them
The Problem
Nearly a billion people worldwide still lack reliable access to electricity, water, or internet — including roughly 600 million people across Africa. Traditional mini-grids have tried to close that gap for decades, but they're built to deliver one utility, usually electricity, not all three. They also require expensive wired infrastructure, only reach people close by, and — because they can only sell electricity — often struggle to stay financially viable.
How Waypoints Solve It
A Waypoint turns sunlight directly into electricity — and makes sure none of it goes to waste. Instead of selling electricity alone, a single Waypoint stacks multiple services on top of the same solar array: rentable batteries, clean drinking water pulled from the air, internet access, and AI training, computing, and data storage. That combination is what makes the model self-sustaining, rather than dependent on continuous outside funding.
On the ground, that looks like fans running, lights staying on after dark, phones charging, shops staying open later, and — as LiquidStar puts it — the party going on longer. Electricity from a Waypoint can also travel up to 15 km beyond the unit itself, carried by electric bikes that deliver batteries directly to people further away.
AI That Actually Reaches the Community
For the first time, individuals, local businesses, and small enterprises near a Waypoint can access real compute power directly — to run their own AI tools, store data, and use cloud-like services, without needing a data center of their own. That includes AI-powered health and education assistants, hosted locally rather than on servers thousands of miles away.
Who Delivers It
LiquidStar was co-founded by Conor Colwell and Scott Salandy-Defour. LiquidStar is a delivery partner of One Thriving Planet, building and operating the Waypoints network.
Already Proven
Djibouti — LiquidStar Waypoint
A solar-powered Waypoint delivering electricity, clean water drawn from the air, internet connectivity, and operator training, in partnership with Djibouti's Ministry of Energy. Operating costs run roughly 92% lower per month than those of a traditional larger data center.
Why it matters: It demonstrates that community-scale digital infrastructure can deliver several essential services from a single renewable platform — and that the compute inside it can help pay for them.
In development
Next-generation Waypoint
LiquidStar's next-generation Waypoint design is already in development, aimed at increasing the scale, impact, and revenue of each unit. LiquidStar's stated goal is 100,000 Waypoints serving 100 million people.
Why it matters: It signals the direction of travel from a few proven sites toward a broad network putting power, water, and connectivity within reach for millions.
Curious About Larger-Scale AI Infrastructure?
Waypoints are LiquidStar's community-scale model.
LiquidStar is also part of a larger AI infrastructure partnership with Regenerative Infrastructure Holdings (RIH), building national-scale AI data centers — including a hydro-powered flagship project in Nepal.
See how RIH data centers work at the national levelHow a Partnership Moves Forward
The first step is not a procurement commitment. It is a structured conversation about fit.
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Community & site assessment
We start by identifying the need — power, water, connectivity, compute, or a combination — and the site conditions a Waypoint would serve.
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Deployment design
We define scope: how many units, where they go, how they connect to any existing infrastructure, and who operates them locally.
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Installation & training
The Waypoint is installed and local operators are trained to run it, as in Djibouti — so the community, not just LiquidStar, can keep it running.
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Operation & scale
The unit begins serving the community. Results there can inform whether additional Waypoints, or a connection into our larger national-scale infrastructure work, make sense next.
Experience and Recognition
The broader One Thriving Planet network includes recipients of the 2024 Nobel Sustainability Award, the 2023 Innovation in Politics Award (Europe), and the CANEX Prize — Jury Chair (Africa), among other honors. (See all awards.) For this offering specifically: LiquidStar's institutional collaborations include the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and Rockefeller's Mission 300, working toward connecting 300 million Africans to electricity.
Request the Waypoints Overview
A follow-up conversation covers what a Waypoint does, how it would apply to your community or site, what deployment involves, and what it costs to operate.
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