In Episode 18 of the Thought Media Podcast, Ava and Max explore China’s groundbreaking $223 million underwater AI data center, a project poised to redefine how the world powers and cools high-performance computing. Located six miles off the coast of Shanghai and set to launch in September, this massive facility will house up to 792 AI-capable servers, cooled naturally by seawater and powered by 97% offshore wind energy.
Ave and Max discuss how this innovative design addresses one of the tech industry’s biggest challenges: the enormous energy demands of modern artificial intelligence workloads. Traditional data centers consume vast amounts of electricity for cooling, but by leveraging the surrounding ocean, China’s facility is projected to use 30% less power than land-based counterparts. Combined with renewable energy sources, the carbon footprint could be significantly reduced.
Ava and Max highlight the bold performance goals, including claims that the center could train a model on the scale of GPT‑3.5 in just a single day. They compare this initiative to Microsoft’s 2018 Project Natick, which successfully tested underwater data storage but remained a short-term research project, noting how China is moving beyond experimentation to full-scale deployment.
The conversation expands to include regional competition, with South Korea and Japan already exploring similar offshore data solutions. However, the hosts also address environmental concerns—such as potential impacts on marine ecosystems from thermal discharge—acknowledging that long-term monitoring will be key to determining the true sustainability of such projects.
Ultimately, the episode frames this development as a pivotal moment in the race for sustainable, high-performance AI infrastructure. If successful, China’s underwater approach could become a global template, balancing computational power with environmental responsibility. Ava and Max leave listeners with the sense that the future of AI may lie not just in the cloud, but beneath the waves.