China has officially launched the world’s first commercial offshore wind-powered underwater AI data centre off the coast of Shanghai’s Lingang Special Area. The futuristic facility contains nearly 2,000 servers housed inside pressure-resistant underwater modules positioned beside offshore wind turbines. Designed to support artificial intelligence workloads, big data processing and domestic large language model development, the project combines renewable energy with natural seawater cooling to reduce electricity use, land requirements and freshwater consumption. Chinese developers say the underwater system achieves a highly efficient Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of around 1.15, significantly lower than many traditional land-based data centres.
