China is speeding up the expansion of offshore infrastructure to respond to a sharp rise in demand for artificial intelligence computing. An undersea data centre directly connected to offshore wind power has started full operations in waters near Shanghai.

On April 7 local time, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that China is fleshing out moves to expand data centre locations from land to sea to ease growing computing power bottlenecks.

According to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, the facility is the world’s first undersea data centre (UDC) directly connected to offshore wind power. It was installed at a depth of 10 metres, about 10 km off Shanghai’s eastern coast.

Construction was handled by Shanghai HiCloud Technology, a subsidiary of ship navigation and communications equipment company Highlander. Total investment is 1.6 billion yuan, and planned processing capacity is about 24 MW.

HiCloud described the project as a key demonstration effort to verify the technical and commercial feasibility of an undersea data centre linked to onshore cloud and telecommunications infrastructure. It presented uses including AI workloads, embodied intelligence and autonomous driving.

The Shanghai project was 추진된 as part of a broader push by China to seek new sites for infrastructure, including the sea and the sky, to expand computing resources. Highlander earlier built an undersea data centre near Hainan Island, and that facility has been in operation since last year.

The Shanghai Development and Reform Research Institute, a think tank affiliated with the Shanghai city government, assessed that combining undersea data centres with offshore wind can help supply high-efficiency, low-latency computing power needed for AI processing. It said the approach is drawing attention as an alternative that can ease site acquisition problems and reduce power and cooling burdens in land-constrained Shanghai.

It remains unclear whether undersea data centres will quickly become standard infrastructure. Microsoft said it has researched related technologies through its underwater data centre experiment, Project Natick, but is no longer actively pushing the project amid concerns about its operational feasibility in 2024.

Research institutions also assess that undersea data centres remain at an early stage. With the lack of standards, maintenance difficulties and questions over economic viability cited as key challenges, they say further technology accumulation and improved cost efficiency are needed before commercialisation.