The Ulanchab of Inner Mongolia is becoming one of the fastest-growing areas in China's AI data centre. According to Goldman Sachs, as of June 2026, local energy commitments had been obtained from data centre operators, Internet companies and AI enterprises totalling 12.5 GW, up from 3.3 GW in July 2025.

Low-time delay and low-priced attracting algorithms

The core conditions behind this round of expansion are proximity to Beijing, lower electricity prices and a higher proportion of green electricity supply. Ulanchab is about 240 km from Beijing, and fibre-optics are about 4.2 milliseconds long enough to absorb the calculator needs of Kyouta.

At the same time, the local new energy unit has exceeded 20 GW, with a relatively high green power share, with data centre terminal electricity at a cost of about $0.33 to $0.36 per degree, which is lower than in most areas of Kyoto. The average annual temperature is around 4.3°C, which also allows local access to natural sources of cooling for most of the time and reduces the cost of heat dispersion.

Synchronization with electrical and arithmetical data

Demand-side data also show the rate of expansion. In 2025, the Ulanchab data centre used capacity growth of more than 70 per cent on a year-on-year basis, reaching about 800 MW; by June 2026, the online calculator had reached 165 EFLOPS, more than double the same ratio.

In the first half of 2026, local data centres increased their electricity consumption by 90 per cent to 3.3 twh per year, representing 7 per cent of total municipal electricity use. This means that the new projects are not only at the planning level, but also that the operational intensity of the existing rooms is increasing.

Green direct supply is the focus of the new project

Unlike traditional IDCs, which rely mainly on public power grids, Ulanchabu is promoting the “green power straight-link” model. Some enterprises provide direct power to the machine room by building their own windyards, dedicated lines and energy storage facilities in order to reduce dependence on the public electricity grid and increase the rate of green electricity use.

The report mentions the planned capacity of 2 GW of the “Star River Base”, which was launched by the Vision Technology Group in Ulaanbaatar, with the goal of creating large-scale parallel computing capabilities. This type of project goes beyond the provision of a hangar and is also advancing the energy, storage and data centre construction package to respond to the high-volatile electricity demand generated by AI training and reasoning.

Mass delivery or after 2028

However, a commitment to capacity does not amount to a full landing in the short term. Reports indicate that China does not lack electricity, but that local areas still need to be accelerated in connection with transmission lines, transformer stations and storage capacity. When the data centre is centralized, there will be a marked increase in regional grid charges, which will also affect the speed of project delivery.

Goldman Sachs predicts that China's data centre online capacity will increase from 28 GW in 2025 to 53 GW in 2030. By contrast, the 12.5 GW commitment currently available in Ulaanbaatar is approximately three times the capacity in Johor, Malaysia. At the same time, however, the report mentions that the real large-scale release of production capacity on the ground may take place after 2028.