China launches world's first commercial underwater data center
The world's first underwater data center has officially opened in the Chinese province of Hainan, part of a large-scale strategy to develop the so-called "blue economy." The servers are housed in a special capsule weighing 1,433 tons, which is equal to the weight of about a thousand cars. Interesting Engineering reports.
The main advantage of this technology is energy efficiency. Conventional data centers consume huge amounts of electricity to cool servers. Underwater, this function is performed by seawater: stable temperature and ocean currents provide natural cooling. This allows you to reduce costs and environmental impact. According to project manager Pu Ding from Shenzhen HiCloud, underwater centers can reduce energy costs several times compared to land-based ones.
Each pod is submerged to a depth of 35 meters and contains 24 server racks with the capacity to accommodate up to 500 servers. In the future, Hainan plans to create a network of 100 such underwater modules. They will support the development of marine research, digital services and intelligent manufacturing, strengthening the province's role as a technology and innovation hub.
Importantly, China has opened up the possibility of full foreign ownership of data centers in Hainan, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. This should attract global investors and make the country competitive in the global data infrastructure market, the demand for which has increased dramatically due to the development of artificial intelligence and cloud services.
The Hainan initiative was an alternative to Microsoft's Project Natick experiment. The American company sank a test data center off the coast of Scotland in 2018. It contained 855 servers and operated for two years, proving the viability of the concept. However, in 2024, Microsoft officially closed the project, abandoning its commercialization.
Thus, China was the first to take a step towards the practical implementation of underwater data centers on a large scale, integrating them into economic planning and global investment strategies.