Ulanqab becomes China's AI data-center capital, 12.5 GW planned

Since 2016, nearly 100 data centers have opened or begun construction in Ulanqab, a city about 350 kilometers northwest of Beijing, with Chinese firms committing to projects totaling 12.5 gigawatts of capacity, Wired reports.

Envision Group anchored the story on August 6, 2026, when it opened what Global Times describes as "the world's largest single AI computing facility," a 120,000-square-meter campus rated to eventually run 1 million GPUs in parallel at 2 gigawatts. Over 80 percent of the site's power comes from directly connected renewables, part of Envision's "Mission Gobi" plan to hit 5 gigawatts of green AI data-center capacity by 2030.

The pitch to tenants is unsubtle. "When electricity is cheap, tokens are cheap...and this gives Ulanqab a significant advantage," Zhang Xiaorong, director of the Cutting-Edge Technology Research Institute, told Global Times. Latency to Beijing measures 4.2 milliseconds. Local electricity runs roughly 50 percent below Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei rates. Computing-power costs sit more than 60 percent below first-tier cities.

DeepSeek is following the money. The Hangzhou startup is planning about 1 gigawatt of its own compute in the city, with at least part of the capacity operating by the end of 2027 or early 2028. Alibaba, Huawei, Apple and Kuaishou already operate facilities in Ulanqab, one of eight designated hubs under Beijing's "east data, west computing" program.

For context, this is one more AI infrastructure story among 444 we've tagged over the last 90 days.