China has launched what it claims is the world’s first wind-powered undersea data center — a sealed, seawater-cooled cluster sitting 35 meters beneath the surface off the coast of Shanghai. The $226 million project, located in the Lin-gang Special Area near the city’s southern tip, is pitched as the prototype for a new kind of energy-efficient, land-sparing cloud infrastructure.
According to Lin-gang’s own development committee, the project is designed to reach megawatts in its full build, with a first phase of 2.3 megawatts already completed. At a planned 24 megawatt capacity, the Lin‑gang facility would be substantially larger than Microsoft’s earlier Natick experiment, which remained a research module rather than a commercial‑scale build. The Lin-gang unit is backed by a state-heavy consortium, including Shenergy, China Telecom’s Shanghai branch, INESA, and CCCC Third Harbor Engineering. Shanghai Hicloud, the operator, says it’s already exploring a cooperation agreement for a 500-megawatt version for offshore sites.
The engineering behind it is pretty simple at a glance. Seal your server racks in watertight capsules, drop them on the seabed, and let the ocean itself handle the thermal load. By avoiding chillers and using seawater as the heat sink, Hicloud claims it can push its power usage effectiveness below 1.15, which is lower than the best land-based hyperscale averages and China’s minimum of 1.25.
HiCloud’s challenge will be to avoid the same fate. The project team says the servers are installed in sealed steel capsules that are coated with a corrosion‑resistant material to safeguard against the saltwater environment. The developers also claim that thermal discharge and marine‑impact levels remain within acceptable limits for the demonstration phase, although independent verification of large‑scale effects is still emerging.
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