Mysterious billionaire is building an underwater habitat for humans that's planned to open in 2027
Published on Jul 05, 2025 at 11:48 PM (UTC+4)
by Ben Thompson
Last updated on Jul 03, 2025 at 3:00 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Amelia Jean Hershman-Jones
A mysterious billionaire is building an underwater habitat for humans, and it’s planned to open up in 2027.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are going towards a training facility in an English limestone quarry, where people are being trained to live in this habitat.
The facility also contains the submersibles that will transport people to the underwater settlement.
This isn’t just a quirky science experiment – the goal is to get humans to live in the ocean for the long haul.
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This mysterious billionaire is funding an underwater habitat for humans
There’s a lot of secrecy surrounding this project, called the ‘Deep’.
Nobody is divulging who the mysterious billionaire benefactor is.
In fact, nobody is even spilling what the overall cost for this extravagant endeavor will be.
What is known, however, is that the mystery billionaire has invested $125 million into the English training campus alone.

The 50-acre site in Gloucestershire includes accommodation units, a training school, and a platform for mini-submersibles.
Those submersibles take people down to living spaces in the 260-foot-deep lake.
It’s inside these underwater units that the scientists are being trained up on how to live in the ocean for much longer than has been achieved, The Guardian reported.
When in the ocean, the units can be lowered 656ft below sea level.

Mike Shackleford, the project’s chief operating officer, has likened it to the space race.
“Back in the 1950s and 60s, there was a space race and an ocean race going on, and space won out,” he told The Guardian.
“Space is tough to get to, but once you’re up there, it’s a relatively benign environment.
“[At the bottom of the ocean] basically, everything wants to kill you.”
Shackleford makes no bones about the team’s long-term goals.


“The goal is to live in the ocean, forever. To have permanent human settlements in all oceans across the world,” he said.
Under the sea…darling it’s better down where it’s wetter
Shackleford is certainly onto something – we’re very intrigued by the deepest depths of the ocean.
Why else would we be constantly building stuff to go down there?
Dubai even had plans for an underwater tennis court – at a staggering cost of $2.5 billion.
Meanwhile, Chinese scientists have developed a bionic whale shark for underwater missions, whilst Stellantis has created an underwater observation capsule.
One man even lived underwater for 120 days – now that’s dedication.
For all we know, we could be writing these articles from an underwater habitat in a few short years.
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