A data center sitting on the ocean floor, powered by wind turbines, cooling itself with seawater. It sounds like a pitch deck that got rejected for being too sci-fi. But it’s real, it’s operational, and it’s processing AI workloads right now off the coast of Shanghai.
The Shanghai Lingang undersea data center has achieved full commercial operations as of May 2026, making it the world’s first offshore wind-powered underwater computing facility. Submerged 10 meters below the surface and located more than 6 miles off the Lingang coast, the facility runs at a total operational capacity of 24 megawatts. It draws energy from nearby offshore wind farms and uses the surrounding seawater as a passive cooling system, cutting energy consumption by at least 30% compared to conventional land-based data centers.
What’s actually down there
Nearly 2,000 servers sit inside the underwater facility, including advanced GPU clusters designed for AI training, big data processing, and 5G infrastructure support. The project scaled up from an initial 2.3 MW demonstration phase to the full 24 MW operation.
The project was formally launched in June 2025, with construction completed by October of the same year. Full operations came online in May 2026. The total cost landed at approximately $226 to $228 million.
