Hainan's underwater data centre in commercial operation

The Hainan underwater data centre in China entered commercial operation in late March 2023 and received, on 18 February 2025, an 18-metre module holding more than 400 servers, cooled by natural seawater flow, with a power usage effectiveness of 1.1 against the 1.4 threshold required in the country.

The reposted publication covers the technical gain and does not say who finances the initial investment. DataCenterDynamics recorded on 11 January 2022 that the Sanya project was contracted at 5.6 billion yuan, around 880 million dollars, announced by the vice-governor of Hainan, Wang Bin, and framed within the province's five-year plans.

Five-year-plan capital and private capital carry different return requirements. Subsea construction concentrates spending before any revenue, and the electrical connection for the three phases, 24,000 kVA supplied by Hainan's state-owned utility, is also left out of the announcement.

What decides the replication of the underwater data centre is the origin of the capital funding the module, not the cooling coefficient.