Chinese maritime and marine technology company Highlander has reportedly added a new module to its underwater data centre in Lingshui, off the coast of Hainan island, to support demand for AI workloads.
According to China News Service, the new module is capable of housing over 400 high-performance servers, and can support around 7,000 DeepSeek AI queries per second. No details were given on the actual capacity of the new module, or what type of equipment is installed.
The report also claims Highlander has signed on around ten companies to utilize the underwater data centre’s capacity for “AI model training and inference, industrial simulation, game development and marine scientific research.”
When Highlander first launched the data centre at the end of March 2023, China Telecom and Hong Kong-based AI software company SenseTime were named as early clients.
The concept of underwater data centres has been around for years, with proponents championing them as an energy-efficient and space-saving alternative to land-based facilities, with the added bonus of being cooled by sea water.
Microsoft first tested an underwater data centre off the US Pacific coast in 2015, and later off the Orkney Islands in Scotland with Project Natick in 2018. While the tests were successful, Data Centre Dynamics confirmed that Microsoft abandoned Project Natick last year.