China launches 'world's first' underwater data center powered by offshore wind energy.
A submersible data center with approximately 2,000 servers located about 10 meters below sea level has been established in China. It is said to be more energy-efficient than cooling servers on land.
Sea wind direct connection to the seabed number center: “Number mind” Green color movement_Energy road_view page(cctv.com)
Why is China putting AI data centers under the sea? - CGTN
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-05-16/Why-is-China-putting-AI-data-centers-under-the-sea--1NbUw6KPABO/p.html
The underwater data center, established in the East China Sea through a partnership between the Chinese government and HiCloud Technology, houses approximately 2,000 servers in 192 server racks and is equipped with a seawater cooling system. Furthermore, it is directly connected to a nearby offshore wind farm with more than 50 wind turbines, and it is said that 95% of its electricity comes from this wind power.
Traditional land-based data centers consume large amounts of fresh water to cool their servers, sometimes using up to half of their electricity for cooling. However, underwater data centers utilize seawater, which has an average annual temperature of 15°C, as a natural cooling system, thus reducing the amount of electricity used for cooling.
A representative from HiCloud Technology explained the cooling mechanism: 'Our backplane air conditioners draw in hot air generated from the servers and change the refrigerant in the copper pipes from liquid to gas. The gas rises to the cooling layer of the upper module by its own buoyancy, where it exchanges heat with a heat exchanger through seawater and changes back from gas to liquid. Finally, gravity returns it to the server room of the data warehouse, forming a heat exchange system that does not require power.'
The unit 'PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness)' is sometimes used as an indicator to measure the energy consumption of data centers. A lower value indicates higher energy efficiency, and a value of 1 means that all the electricity is used for data processing. Conventional onshore data centers typically have a PUE of 1.4 to 1.6, which means that for every 1 kWh spent on data processing, an additional 0.4 to 0.6 kWh is spent on cooling. In contrast, the newly constructed underwater data center has a PUE of less than 1.15.
Furthermore, while conventional onshore data centers are often located far from power plants, resulting in power losses due to long-distance transmission, this data center is directly connected to a wind power plant, thus minimizing the risk of losses.
The processing power of the data center is sent to Shanghai's Lingang New Area, located 10km west of the data center, for use. During this process, network latency is reduced to a virtually imperceptible level of 0.5 milliseconds.
This underwater data center project officially launched in June 2025 and was completed in October 2025. Following successful initial testing in February 2026, it reached full commercial operation in May.
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