Off the coast of Shanghai's Lingang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, what developers are calling the world's first underwater data center powered directly by an offshore wind farm has been put into operation, marking a significant convergence of renewable energy infrastructure and computing technology.

A Project Years in the Making

The facility's origins trace back to June 2025, when the administrative committee of the Lingang Special Area, Shanghai Lingang Special Area Investment Holding Group, and HiCloud Technology signed a cooperation agreement to formally launch the project.

By October 2025, the Chinese government announced that construction of what it described as "the world's first wind-powered underwater data center project" had been completed, framing it as "a demonstration for the green and low-carbon development of computing infrastructure and for the local consumption of offshore wind power."

In February 2026, the Lingang Special Area announced that the full facility, valued at USD 228 million, had been launched. The project has now moved from construction and launch announcements into active operation, with Chinese media reporting that the facility is fully functioning.

Design and Location

The underwater data center sits 10 meters below the surface, positioned between the first and second phases of Lingang's offshore wind farm. The modules are placed adjacent to offshore wind turbines, a configuration that allows electricity to be supplied directly from the wind farm without the transmission losses associated with routing power to onshore grid infrastructure first.

Seawater provides the primary cooling mechanism for the facility, eliminating the need for the freshwater cooling systems that conventional land-based data centers require.

According to the project developers, this approach removes water consumption entirely while also reducing overall electricity consumption by 22.8 percent compared to standard data center operations.

The facility's power usage effectiveness, a standard industry metric measuring how efficiently a data center uses energy, is maintained at around 1.15, a figure the developers describe as among industry-leading levels.

The physical footprint of the installation also represents a significant reduction compared to equivalent land-based infrastructure, with developers stating that land use is cut by more than 90 percent.

Phased Capacity Rollout

The project is structured across two development phases. The first phase functions as a demonstration facility with a capacity of 2.3 MW, establishing the technical viability of the offshore underwater configuration.

The second phase scales the total installed capacity to 24 MW. The full project capacity of 24 MW is the figure associated with the USD 228 million overall investment announced earlier this year.

Computing Capabilities and Tenants

Inside the submerged modules, GPU servers support a range of computing workloads. According to the project developers, these include big data annotation tasks and the development of domestic large language models.

The facility is also designed to enable coordinated allocation of computing resources between the offshore underwater installation and onshore facilities, creating a hybrid infrastructure model.

Several major computing operators have already deployed clusters within the facility. China Telecom is among the companies cited as having established a presence in the data center, alongside local computing service providers including LinkWise, according to statements made by the Lingang Special Area earlier in 2026.

Policy and Industrial Context

The project sits at the intersection of two significant priorities for Chinese industrial policy: the expansion of offshore wind energy capacity and the build-out of domestic artificial intelligence and computing infrastructure.

By physically connecting a data center to an offshore wind installation, the project addresses the challenge of local consumption of offshore wind power, a persistent issue for wind farms located far from existing onshore demand centers.

The Chinese government's October 2025 announcement framing the project as a demonstration for "green and low-carbon development of computing infrastructure" signals that authorities view the model as potentially replicable for future deployments.

The Lingang Special Area, which operates as part of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, has positioned the project as both a technical milestone and a template for integrating energy and digital infrastructure at sea.

The combination of direct renewable energy supply, seawater cooling, and offshore placement addresses several operational and environmental challenges that have drawn scrutiny to the data center industry more broadly, including high energy consumption, significant water use for cooling systems, and competition for land in dense urban and industrial regions.

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