China says 'world's first' offshore wind-powered underwater data center has entered full operation, houses 2,000 servers

China says a 24 MW underwater data center near Shanghai has entered full operation after trials, with about 2,000 servers running AI and other workloads.

The subsea facility uses seawater for passive cooling and draws part of its power from an offshore wind farm, aiming to cut energy use and cooling demand.

Built with government and private partners in the Lingang Special Area, it is being watched as a test case for lower-carbon, high-density computing infrastructure.

The project also highlights tradeoffs: underwater systems may reduce emissions, but they add engineering, maintenance, and reliability challenges.