China Has An Underwater Data Center. The U.S. Will Build Them In Space

October 20, 2025
| No Comments
  AI, China, Data Centres
 

By Suwanna Gauntlett Upjohn,
Published by Forbes, 20 October 2025

China’s Highlander has launched an underwater data center in Hainan, the first project like it to be deployed at commercial scale. The energy demands of Ai data centers come largely from the cooling requirements of the servers, and China has answered this question by placing their Ai data centers underwater. This is something that’s been successfully experimented with by Microsoft among others but hasn’t been deployed commercially before now. The benefits of submerged data centers include a reduction of 90% in cooling costs as the ocean’s currents do what fresh water would otherwise; this translates into 40% more compute than a comparable land-based system. When coupled with renewable energy the costs drop further as this project is largely powered by an adjacent offshore windfarm; the company says that it’s 95% powered with renewable energy.

A drone photo taken on Feb. 18, 2025 shows Hainan’s commercial underwater intelligent computing cluster being lowered into the sea near Lingshui Li Autonomous County in south China’s Hainan Province. The project is now finished and commercially operational: Xinhua

Ai and Water

Microsoft and others have built underwater data centers, but no projects of this caliber are currently operating in the West. Anything that saves water is welcome as current land-based data centers are often built in arid regions and require massive water withdrawals that stress already water stressed regions. The current trajectory is toward continued water disregard, as the recent batch of data centers announced by OpenAI will be built in Texas, New Mexico, and somewhere in the Midwest. These states are not water abundant, and any withdrawals will come at the expense of local residents’ drinking water and competing industries such as agriculture.

Drought Map for the US
The current levels of water stress across America. The scale goes from “none” to “exceptional drought.” Most of the country shows some level of water scarcity: U.S. Drought Monitor

More encouraging from Sam Altman this month is the news that Samsung and OpenAI will develop floating data centers, a signal of openness and sign that OpenAI recognizes the strengths of diversification. The specific reasons stated in Samsung’s statement about this collaboration highlight a few strategic advantages of floating data centers, “Floating data centers are considered to have advantages over data centers because they can address land scarcity, lower cooling costs and reduce carbon emissions.”

See: Original Article