Shanghai: China has launched the world's first commercial wind-powered underwater data center off the coast of Shanghai, as demand for computing infrastructure from the country's AI sector continues to grow. The Shanghai Lingang undersea data center is located approximately 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) offshore in Shanghai's Lingang Special Area, a special economic zone on the city's southern edge. It is a joint project between HiCloud Technology, a private engineering contractor specializing in subsea infrastructure, and China Communications Construction, a state-owned enterprise.
According to Anadolu Agency, the facility was officially launched in June 2025 and began full commercial operations in May. The facility has a total capacity of 24 megawatts, equivalent to the electricity needs of roughly 20,000 households. Power is supplied by offshore wind turbines.
Underwater data centers are sealed server pods placed on the seabed. Rather than using conventional air conditioning, the Lingang facility uses seawater as a natural coolant, circulated through a copper-pipe heat exchange system. This approach reduces electricity consumption and eliminates freshwater use in the cooling process. Data centers require significant energy not only to run servers but also to keep them cool. Cooling accounts for a substantial share of total energy use in conventional land-based facilities, making alternative methods an active area of research and development in the industry.
Shanghai has emerged as one of China's main AI hubs, home to companies working in large-scale machine learning, autonomous vehicles, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing. The city's growing concentration of computing-intensive industries has increased demand for data center capacity with low latency and high processing density. The Lingang project is positioned as a response to that demand, combining offshore renewable energy with AI-focused digital infrastructure. Chinese engineers have described it as a potential model for future computing systems.
The concept of underwater data centers is not new. Between 2018 and 2020, Microsoft ran an experimental project called Project Natick, sinking a pod containing 855 servers to the seabed off the Orkney Islands in Scotland. The trial ran for two years and found that the underwater servers experienced lower failure rates than comparable land-based machines. However, in June 2024, Microsoft confirmed it had closed Project Natick and would not pursue underwater data centers as a commercial product. Industry experts described the concept as technically viable but difficult to scale economically.