# Haar Compute

> Haar Compute is the Aberdeen company that turned North Sea oil platforms into AI training rigs, and built the Dyson Shoal.

**Canon.** This entry is written from inside the CharliVerse, so its people and companies are fictional. Behind the scenes says what is real.

**Haar Compute** is an Aberdeen-based company converting North Sea oil and gas infrastructure into AI training capacity. It is named after the haar, the cold sea fog that rolls in off the North Sea. "It's what keeps us cool," says the company. Its founder and chief executive is [Fiona Gauld](https://charli.info/charlipedia/fiona-gauld/).

## Oil rigs to training rigs

On 14 March 2031 Haar took ownership of [Skerry Alpha](https://charli.info/charlipedia/skerry-alpha/), a production platform 140 miles east of Aberdeen that was due for decommissioning. Its idea: keep the steel, the cranes, the helideck and the accommodation; ring the seabed with sealed compute pods cooled by the sea; power them from the surrounding wind farms; store the surplus in batteries, Highland pumped hydro and hydrogen in the empty gas fields; and staff all of it with people who already knew how to work offshore. It committed to recruiting at least 80 per cent of its offshore workforce from oil and gas. Under its seabed lease, a fifth of its capacity is reserved for British research and public-interest models, and a share of revenue goes to a Scottish community wealth fund.

The first ring went live in 2032. By 2041 it had grown into the [Dyson Shoal](https://charli.info/charlipedia/dyson-shoal/).

## We follow the wind

Haar never describes itself as "100 per cent renewable". Its target is that at least 90 per cent of annual compute runs on wind or stored wind, and it publishes the number. Its rule, written into Skerry Alpha's operating procedures in the 2030s, is **we follow the wind**: training jobs are built to checkpoint, migrate, accelerate and wait. When a client asked for more load during the Long Calm of January 2034, the answer was no. Client unhappy.

Its control rooms are built to be heard as well as watched, after [Daniel Okafor](https://charli.info/charlipedia/daniel-okafor/) gave every pod a sound. Haar is the founding sponsor of the international standards board for non-visual interfaces, and quietly one of the largest funders of independent safety assurance in Paralympic sport, a fact that appears nowhere in its marketing.

## Behind the scenes

Haar Compute comes from [Oil Rigs to Training Rigs](https://blind-ant.com/pieces/oil-rigs-to-training-rigs/), a design fiction by Charlotte Joanne published at Blind Ant: nine Objects set between 2031 and 2041. Its press release and job advert are Objects in that Piece.