Chinese company claims first wind-powered underwater data centre

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Data Centres & Networks; 24 October 2025; 13695 views

Following the news, reported earlier this month, that the world’s first commercial underwater data centre is now operational in Hainan in China, a Chinese company has now completed construction on what is claimed to be the world’s first wind-powered underwater data centre.

Chinese underwater data centre firm HiCloud has reportedly launched a demonstration project connecting servers directly to a (so far apparently unidentified) offshore wind farm and announced plans to scale up its subsea deployments to 500MW.

The demonstration site is located off the coast of Shanghai and was inaugurated at an event earlier this week. Unconfirmed reports suggest it will offer 2.3MW of data centre space,

Land data centres require a lot of water for cooling each day, often affecting local water supply, something that is presumably less of an issue when the data centre is already submerged. The wind power element is undoubtedly a bonus in sustainability terms.

In fact, according to the Data Center Dynamics website, the demonstration project marks the first stage of HiCloud’s plan to build a large-scale underwater data centre powered by offshore wind.

Indeed, the demonstration event apparently also involved a cooperation agreement which was signed between HiCloud and a number of industrial partners, with the companies agreeing to work together on a 500MW underwater data centre, though where and when this could happen have not yet been revealed.

HiCloud is a division of Chinese company Highlander, which is principally engaged in the research, development, production, distribution and provision of maritime and marine electronic technology products and systems.

In 2021 Highlander developed what it described as the world’s first underwater data centre modules off the coast of Hainan Province and followed this up with a facility in 2023.