A look at Chinese company Hailanyun's $223M wind-powered underwater data center, about six miles from Shanghai and using tech Microsoft pioneered back in 2014
such as a new site near Shanghai—with seawater cooling reduces energy use by ~30% compared to traditional centers. Phase one launches in September. — www.scientificamerican.com/article/ chin... #datacenters Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : This seems like ha ha ummmm ermmm not such a great thing www.scientificamerican.com/article/ chin... Andrea Thompson / @andreatweather : Data centers not only use a lot of energy, but they need a lot of water to keep from overheating. But that competes with other uses of water, such as for drinking. So China is looking to put data centers in the ocean. 🧪
Context & Ripple Effects
Hailanyun’s project extends a line of experimentation Microsoft began with Project Natick’s self-contained underwater data-center design. The common aim is to move heat management away from conventional land-based cooling constraints.
The project also arrives as operators test multiple approaches to reducing cooling overhead, including Microsoft’s zero-water cooling design. Its significance is less the underwater form factor alone than the pairing of marine cooling with dedicated wind power.
First-order effects
- Hailanyun commits $223M to a site near Shanghai, with its first phase scheduled for September; the company is the immediate execution and reliability risk-holder.
- If the stated performance holds, seawater cooling cuts the facility’s energy use by roughly 30% versus traditional data centers, changing the operating-cost profile for this deployment.
Second-order effects
- Data-center developers facing power and water constraints gain another design reference point, while conventional cooling vendors face pressure to demonstrate comparable efficiency in suitable locations.
- The project makes wind supply, subsea construction, and marine operations more consequential inputs to data-center development rather than peripheral infrastructure choices.
Third-order effects
- If deployments such as this prove operable over time, data-center siting could shift toward location-specific energy and cooling resources, treating compute capacity more like utility infrastructure.
- The model’s wider adoption remains contingent on whether offshore maintenance, permitting, and environmental trade-offs outweigh its cooling and power advantages.
The trend: AI-era data-center expansion is driving more specialized facility designs that combine low-carbon power with alternatives to water- and energy-intensive cooling.