Public AI for Maine
Value-added AI services for citizens, municipalities, and small businesses, running on community-governed compute at MOCSI, the Maine Open Compute Services Initiative.
MOCSI
Maine Open Compute Services Initiative
What
MOCSI is a planned community-scale data center (8-16 GPUs, <$1M capex) in Maine with local ownership, an explicit public interest focus, and an open, auditable service stack.
Why
Affordable compute for Maine citizens and businesses, so that benefits accrue to Mainers instead of distant tech companies. Imagine if AI was both 50% cheaper in Maine and 50% better at the stuff that we care about. That's possible when people own their own compute.
How
Right now, data centers are among the least popular things in America. We turn that data center backlash into affordable compute. This has been done before. Maine has a history of public and cooperative infrastructure. We're inspired by town-owned broadband, cooperative ISPs, and other public AI projects like Empire AI and Calcompute. And we plan to serve inference in a few ways:
| Service category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Bare-metal access | Dedicated, unshared compute for anchor customers and research institutions. |
| Government deployments | Voice-based public service AI agents for local agencies; local deployments of the Public AI Libraries Project catalog. |
| Subsidized end-user access | Chat, API, and agentic tooling for locals and Mainers. Currently: Public AI Chat, Public AI Aquaculture, Library kiosk, Community agents (beta). |
| Free access | For specific local services and public-interest use cases, e.g. suicide hotlines, diagnostic health screening. |
News & updates
August 21, 2026
We brought on Fletcher Kittredge as fractional CEO, with a plan to write a forkable recipe for any city or state that wants to try what we're doing.
August 20, 2026
We hosted another small workshop with local Maine stakeholders, focused on the site, structure, and finances of the deal.
August 10, 2026
Sam Merkatz presented an initial proof of concept for the Public AI Aquaculture project.
June 25, 2026
We hosted our first stakeholder workshop at the Roux Institute in downtown Portland. Attendees included state legislators, prominent entrepreneurs, civil society, representatives from multiple state agencies including the Maine Connectivity Authority, and Bernstein Shur and other key Maine business leaders.
May 1, 2026
We visited candidate sites and reviewed financing across Lincoln Mill in Brunswick, Loring Air Force Base, and CENTRA on Cumberland St. in Portland.
April 7, 2026
The Maine Legislature passed a data center moratorium led by Rep. Melanie Sachs. Governor Mills vetoed it on April 24, 2026.
December 16, 2025
The Lewiston City Council unanimously voted down a proposed AI data center at Bates Mill after public outcry. Read the Press Herald's coverage.
December 15, 2025
Josh joked to a table of funders, “Who wants to help me build the least popular thing in America?” To his surprise, the CEO of Omidyar Network said yes.
December 8, 2025
Matt messages Josh: “Is a 'pretty small' data center sufficient to make this worthwhile? Generally, Maine is fairly prime for an energy/compute play. Rural Maine gets telehealth but they close the hospitals; edtech but they close the school, etc. The highways of Maine were built by corporations that had state-mandated legal obligations to share ownership interest and governance rights with the communities affected by the highways - farmers, local biz, towns themselves. Let's run it back.”