Seattle-based cloud computing company Chillmine has signed a memorandum of understanding with Zimbabwean independent power producer (IPP) Energywise to develop solar-powered data centers across the country.

The companies intend to utilize power from Energywise’s planned 100MW Runde River Solar Park in Zvishavane, in the south of the country, to power the facilities. Construction timelines on the project are not available.

The Chillmine-developed data centers are expected to support AI Infrastructure-as-a-Service and cryptomining hosting. Chillmine has indicated that it plans to deploy liquid cooling at the sites to support its sustainability credentials.

“We are not only supporting the growth of emerging technologies but also contributing to the sustainable development of our nation’s infrastructure,” said Culven Chipfumbu, managing director of Energywise.

While not explicitly reported, the data centers will seemingly be directly powered by the solar park. This was alluded to by Chillmine CEO Brian Neirby, who said that the park offers the kind of reliable, renewable power essential for scaling energy-intensive operations like AI computing and crypto mining. The location and construction timelines of the planned data centers were not disclosed.

Chillmine was originally founded in 2018, however, it only registered a domain name - chillmine.io - in December 2024. The site went live in January of this year, with the majority of the executive team, including the CEO, joining at that time.

Energywise has operated in Zimbabwe for some time and is one of ten IPPs approved by the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority. In addition to the Runde River project, the company has three other projects in development, two of which have a planned capacity of 30MW, and the other with a planned capacity of 5MW.