China boasts underwater hub can handle 7,000 DeepSeek chats per second

A new underwater data center off the tropical island of Hainan can handle 7,000 DeepSeek conversations per second, Chinese state media has reported.

A datacenter capsule was added to an existing computing cluster in Lingshui County, which borders the popular resort city of Sanya in what is sometimes called “China’s Hawaii.”

According to the Global Times, a state-run daily, the capsule, measuring 18 meters long and nearly four meters in diameter, houses more than 400 high-performance servers.

The report said that the addition would boost the center’s computing power to the equivalent of 30,000 high-end gaming computers running simultaneously, a capacity that “could support 7,000 conversations per second with the Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek.”

It said the cluster could perform a calculation in one second that would take regular computers a year to complete.

The Global Times cites intelligent computing centers as “critical assets” for AI research and training and says the cluster in Hainan would “significantly enhance” China’s competitive edge in the global technology race.

The deep sea provides a stable environment for the center, acting as a natural coolant to improve energy efficiency while also conserving land and freshwater resources – an increasingly pressing issue as AI's energy demands grow worldwide.

The center in Hainan signed agreements with several companies that use its capabilities for AI training, as well as industrial simulations, game development, and marine science research.

According to official data, over 200 AI computing centers are currently under development in dozens of cities across China. China is competing with the US and Europe to develop AI, both of which have announced AI investment schemes worth hundreds of billions of dollars.