One kilowatt-hour.
Two jobs.
ThermalCore is a sealed compute module built in the exact shape of a standard screw-in heating element. It threads into the port your tank already has — the water cools the chips for free, and every watt of computation becomes the hot water you were buying anyway.
Concept illustration — the smart screw-in element, shown installed in a standard tank.
The Problem
The economy pays for the same kilowatt-hour twice.
Computers turn electricity into heat — all of it, by physics. Data centers pay dearly to throw that heat away. Meanwhile the buildings around them burn more electricity to make heat on purpose. Two bills. One kilowatt-hour of actual work.
Computing demand is exploding
U.S. data centers used 4.4% of national electricity in 2023 and are projected to reach 6.7–12% by 2028 (LBNL, 2024). Every one of those watts leaves as heat — mostly wasted.
Buildings burn power for hot water
Water heating is typically ~18% of a home's energy use — the second-largest load (EIA) — and a major around-the-clock load in many commercial buildings. It is heat made from scratch, right next to heat being discarded.
Working silicon becomes e-waste
Retired data-center and mining hardware — roughly 31 kilotonnes a year from Bitcoin mining alone (de Vries & Stoll, 2021) — still converts electricity to heat perfectly. It's an entire supply chain of heating elements, discarded.
How It Works
Same port. Same heat. New income.
Most electric water heaters — and virtually all U.S. residential tanks — share one standardized feature: the threaded element port. ThermalCore replaces the dumb resistor behind it with computation.
Unscrew. Screw in.
ThermalCore installs in the standard screw-in element port that electric water heaters, boilers, and industrial tanks already have. No new plumbing, no construction, no extra floor space.
Chips compute, sealed in oil.
Inside the stainless housing, processors run immersed in dielectric oil. The tank water surrounding the module is the heatsink — industrial-grade cooling the building gets for free.
Every watt becomes hot water.
Essentially every watt the chips consume ends up as heat in the water — the same conversion a resistive element performs. The computation revenue is the new part.
Concept illustration — installation is the same motion a plumber already knows: replacing a heating element.
The Product Family
One invention. Five ways in.
The filed application covers the form factors that make an element-port computer practical in the real world — including a geometry problem no incumbent product addresses: almost nothing computes in a one-inch opening.
01Straight element
The drop-in: a rigid sealed module in the classic element shape, for tanks with clearance. Same install as the part it replaces.
02The flexible snake
A chain of narrow compute segments that threads through the one-inch port and coils inside the tank — more computing power through the same small opening.
03Buoyant deployment
A float-tipped snake that rises and self-arranges as the tank fills, spreading heat — and cooling — through the water column.
04Dry-well sleeve
A permanent sleeve that lets the compute cartridge be swapped in seconds — without draining the tank. Silicon ages faster than steel; serviceability is designed in.
05Hybrid fail-safe
Compute module plus a backup resistive coil in one housing, designed so that if the electronics ever stop, the coil takes over automatically and the building keeps its hot water.
The flexible snake, deployed — compute segments coiled through the water column. Concept illustration.
Compute Workloads
The water gets hot either way. What the chips work on is up to you.
ThermalCore modules can run any computing job that tolerates being paced by the tank's demand for heat — the workload simply decides who pays for the electricity's first job.
Where It Fits
If electricity heats a liquid, ThermalCore can be retrofitted into it.
Twelve of the places the threaded element port already lives — each one a retrofit, not a rebuild.
Why Now
Three clocks are striking at once.
The law is creating the market
NYC Local Law 154 bans fossil-fuel combustion in new buildings — in force for buildings under seven stories since 2024, extending to all new buildings in July 2027 — effectively making new hot-water systems electric, with other jurisdictions following. Each new element port is a socket ThermalCore can fill.
RegulationCompute demand needs somewhere to go
Data-center electricity is projected to grow to as much as nearly triple its national share by 2028 (LBNL, 2024). Distributed compute that pays for its own cooling — and sells its heat — is the pressure valve.
DemandThe hardware supply chain exists
The compute industry's upgrade cycle produces a constant stream of inexpensive, fully working processors. They're retired for being slow at math — but they're still perfect at making heat.
SupplyGo-To-Market
Beachhead first. Buildings next. License everything.
1 · Industrial process tanks
Aqueous parts washers and process baths already run on electric immersion elements at 60–82 °C, many of them near-continuously, year-round. Same port, full electric-rate heat credit, and owners who buy on payback. This is where ThermalCore lands first.
Beachhead2 · All-electric buildings
Commercial electric water heaters ship with as many as a dozen element ports. As electrification mandates take hold, ThermalCore turns every all-electric boiler room into a micro data center that pays part of the utility bill.
Scale3 · OEM & operator licensing
The endgame is the element itself as a licensed standard — adopted by water-heater manufacturers and heat-reuse operators who today build entire custom appliances to do what one screw-in part can do.
Endgame
A ThermalCore fleet at building scale — every tank computing while it heats. Concept render.
Aquaculture pilot vision — constant-temperature tanks, compute-heated water. Concept render.
The Technology & IP
Filed. Comprehensive. Retrofit-first.
Patent pending — “Immersion Computing Module for Liquid-Heating Appliances”
A full utility patent application with 20 claims (3 independent), drafted and filed by the inventor. The incumbents in heat-reuse computing build new appliances or external skids; the filed claims cover the retrofit path — computing inside the vessel the building already owns.
The sealed compute module in the standardized screw-in heating-element form factor.
The “snake” — chained segments that pass a one-inch port and coil inside the tank.
Float-assisted self-arrangement of the flexible module through the water column.
Cartridge swaps without draining the vessel — silicon re-cores on a steel timeline.
Integrated resistive element designed for continuity of hot water if the compute module fails.
Building-scale orchestration with demand-response participation across module fleets.
Status: awaiting first examination. A bench prototype — real silicon, sealed in oil, heating a real tank through the standard port — is in progress, with an instrumented build log to follow.
The Inventor
Built by someone who can write the IP, negotiate the license, and open the boiler-room door.
Benny Goldstein
Inventor & Founder
LL.B. · LL.M. · PATENTS & CONTRACTS
Attorney, LL.B. and LL.M., specializing in patent and contract law. Benny drafts and files his own U.S. patent applications pro se as the inventor — ThermalCore is his fifth. IP strategy, licensing, and contracts are in-house by definition.
Real-estate operator. His day job is multifamily real-estate operations and investor relations across a large rental portfolio — which means direct access to the boiler rooms, building owners, and affordable-housing programs where ThermalCore's building-scale story starts.
Relentless inventor. A pipeline of filed applications, a bench prototype in progress, and one conviction: the cheapest heat in the world is the heat somebody already paid to make.
Contact
Pilot sites, partners & licensing — let's talk.
Operating an electrically heated tank that runs around the clock? Electrifying a building's hot water? Building heat-reuse infrastructure? ThermalCore is looking for early pilot partners.