After retrieving a submerged shipping-container-size data center from Scotland's Orkney Islands, deployed in 2018, Microsoft says the project was a success
Two years after deploying a shipping-container-size data center to the depths off Scotland's Orkney Islands, Microsoft has reeled it back in …
Context & Ripple Effects
Project Natick began in 2016 as an experiment in self-contained underwater data centers meant to eliminate cooling costs and cut deployment time, and Microsoft moved to its next phase in 2018 by sinking a container-size pod off Scotland's Orkney Islands designed to run five years without maintenance. Retrieving it after two years and declaring the project a success closes the loop on that test.
The result also lands in a live competitive field: Hailanyun's $223M wind-powered underwater data center near Shanghai uses techniques Microsoft pioneered, so the company is validating an approach a rival is already commercializing — while on land Microsoft keeps attacking the same cooling problem with its zero-water data center design rolled out from August 2024.
First-order effects
- Microsoft now has field data from the Orkney deployment proving a sealed underwater pod can operate without maintenance, the core assumption behind Natick's cooling-cost and rapid-deployment thesis.
- Hailanyun, which built its Shanghai-area underwater facility on Microsoft's pioneering work, gains validation that the approach its $223M project depends on actually works at sea.
Second-order effects
- If Microsoft decides the economics justify scaling, coastal siting becomes a new variable in its capacity plans — a contrast to its current land-based buildout, such as leasing Crusoe's 900 MW Abilene, Texas data center.
- Underwater deployment shifts the cooling cost question from ongoing water and power consumption toward one-time marine engineering, pressuring land-based designs — Microsoft's own zero-water cooling rollout included — to keep closing the efficiency gap.
Third-order effects
- If the Natick pattern holds and followers like Hailanyun scale, data center capacity could migrate toward seabed sites near coastal population centers, decoupling growth from land, fresh water, and local grid constraints — and pulling seabed infrastructure into regulatory conversations that don't yet exist for it.
The trend: Data center siting and cooling are being rethought around sealed, self-contained designs — underwater pods and zero-water land facilities alike — as operators chase capacity without water and land constraints.