China built an underwater AI data centre for $226M.
The land equivalent would have cost twice as much.
The world's first underwater AI data centre, powered by offshore wind, just launched off the coast of Shanghai.
$226M to build
24 MW of capacity
Cooled by seawater
PUE of 1.15
Network latency of 0.5ms to Shanghai, 10km away
Zero land required. Near-zero water consumption
While the US and Europe are waiting 5 years for transformers and cancelling offshore wind farms, China has made underwater data centres official national policy.
Several Chinese provinces already have them in their five-year plans.
The USA remains the biggest market for AI infrastructure spending. But the gap in execution speed is worth paying attention to.
Is this the future of AI infrastructure?