A conventional tidal turbine sits on the seabed and waits for water to push past it. It works in places where tidal currents are strong, but it also stops working when currents are weak - and most ocean sites do not have the kind of constant fast flow that makes a fixed turbine economic. Minesto's solution borrowed an idea from kite-flyers: a tethered wing flying actively across a steady current can generate aerodynamic lift, and that lift can be converted into mechanical power. The Minesto kite flies in a figure-of-eight pattern, perhaps twenty metres across and three metres tall, with the highest point about seven metres below the surface. The fly cycle takes six to eight seconds. The kite reaches speeds of 2.5 to 5.5 metres per second through the water - far faster than the underlying current - and that speed difference is what drives the turbine mounted below the wing. The original concept was developed in 2003 inside the wind department of Saab. The standalone company was formed in 2007.

In 2014, The Crown Estate awarded Minesto a seabed lease for a 10 MW project in the Holyhead Deep, an area of strong tidal flow off the western coast of Holy Island. By 2017, the company had submitted a scoping report for an 80 MW array, arguing that the larger scale would halve the levelised cost of electricity. Between July and November 2018 Minesto tested a 500 kW prototype called Deep Green DG500 in the Holyhead Deep, anchored to a gravity base and connected to a monitoring buoy rather than to the GB grid. In August 2019, the DG500 went back in the water for further testing. Plans evolved: a 1.2 MW unit by end of 2022, then supply chain issues pushed the schedule, then by March 2022 the company decided to redirect its main effort to projects in the Faroe Islands.

In November 2023, Minesto shipped a much bigger turbine - the 1.2 MW Dragon 12, weighing 28 tonnes with a 12-metre wingspan and a 3.5-metre rotor - from Sweden to the Faroe Islands. In January 2024, the grid connection went in and the launch-and-recovery system was tested. In February 2024, the Dragon 12 was deployed and connected to the Faroes electricity grid - the first megawatt-scale tidal kite anywhere actually exporting power to a national grid. The company's plans for the Faroes have since scaled up to multiple arrays totalling 200 MW, with the goal of supplying around 40 percent of the islands' electricity demand. In June 2025, a Minesto-led consortium won SEK 25 million from the Swedish Energy Agency for a complete microgrid installation in the Faroes, in partnership with the local utility SEV, microgrid company Capture Energy, and the Swedish research institute IVL.

In July 2025, Minesto closed its Welsh office in a cost-cutting reorganisation. The Holyhead assembly hall that had been the company's UK manufacturing base - fully operational since 2020 - went quiet. CEO Martin Edlund said publicly that the company remained committed to its tidal site and build-out plan for the Holyhead Deep, but the immediate focus had moved to the Faroes. The Crown Estate lease remained in place. The seabed remained leased for tidal energy. The dream of the 80 MW Holyhead array remained on paper. Meanwhile, in the same waters just east of the Minesto site, the Morlais project - a different tidal energy scheme using multiple developers and different turbine designs - continued moving toward its first device deployments in 2026. The Welsh coast around Holy Island is not done as a global testing ground for tidal energy. Minesto's chapter there just happened to close first.