New underwater data center capsule in China packs the power of 30,000 high-end gaming PCs

Underwater data centers are not a new idea - neither are 'floating cities' of compute clusters, for that matter - but the scope of a growing initiative over in China is certainly impressive.

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Microsoft's Project Natick didn't get as far as this new scheme helmed by Highlander over in China (Image Credit: Microsoft)

Global Times (via TechRadar Pro) reports that a new data center capsule - measuring 18 meters long, and 3.6 meters in diameter - has been launched in Lingshui (a county in Hainan Province, China).

The new capsule is linked to an existing underwater data center, with this project in Hainan first kicked off by the data center firm Highlander back in 2023 (as the first commercial effort of its kind).

Said capsule contains more than 400 beefy servers and offers computing power that's equivalent to 30,000 high-end gaming PCs, we're told. This is enough raw grunt to enable agents powered by DeepSeek, the AI that recently came to the fore in China, to handle up to 7,000 conversations per second, according to China Media Group.

Looking down the line, some 100 capsules are expected to be bolted on to the project in stages, expanding the data center massively over time.

Microsoft tried experimenting with underwater data centers as a possible way forward starting in 2018 with 'Project Natick' in the UK (on the seafloor just off the Orkney Islands in Scotland).

The company concluded that such submerged data centers were "reliable, practical and use energy sustainably" in 2020, but Microsoft subsequently abandoned the idea - with China clearly taking up the challenge with more relish now. Of course, the obvious benefit of such a data center is the ability to use the ocean for cooling.