Bloomberg found China is building a small city of AI data centers in a remote desert. In this mini-documentary, we reveal how it’s planning to use thousands of export-banned US chips to power them https://t.co/iIHBF0rFIA
— Bloomberg (@business) July 31, 2025
China plans to build roughly 36 data centers in its remote Xinjiang desert zone, powered by over 115,000 Nvidia H100 and H200 AI chips—even though those chips are banned from export to China.
“China plans 39 AI data centers with 115,000 restricted Nvidia Hopper GPUs … approximately 70 percent of this GPU capacity … will be concentrated in a single state‑owned data center in Yiwu County, Xinjiang.”
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/china-aims-to-build-data-centers-housing-115000-nvidia-chips-in-xinjiang-desert-report/
U.S. officials believe only about 25,000 restricted chips may be in China now.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/china-aims-to-build-data-centers-housing-115000-nvidia-chips-in-xinjiang-desert-report/
These centers are located in desert regions chosen for cheap land, wind and solar power, and cool conditions for server operations.
https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/chinas-ambitious-ai-push-faces-supply-roadblock-in-nvidia-chip-haul–bloomberg-4127359
These facts point to a gap: massive infrastructure plans based on chip use that may not exist. Some centers may stay unused if chips never arrive or can’t run at scale.