From grasslands to GPUs: Why China is building its AI powerhouse in Mongolia - explained in 5 charts

Ulanqab’s operating computing capacity rose from 24,000P in 2024 to 172,000P by August 2026 China’s artificial-intelligence boom is no longer confined to laboratories, software companies or technology districts in its biggest cities.By the end of 2025, China had 602 million generative-AI users, up 141.7 per cent from a year earlier, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). The country’s core AI industry was valued at more than 1.2 trillion yuan in 2025, while the number of AI companies surpassed 6,200, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.That surge in AI adoption is driving an equally rapid expansion in computing infrastructure. China’s intelligent computing capacity reached 1.59 million PFLOPS by the end of 2025, according to the National Data Administration. A petaflop (P) measures computing performance, with one P representing one quadrillion floating-point operations per second.But AI needs more than algorithms. It needs enormous amounts of computing power, and the electricity, cooling, land and network infrastructure required to keep that computing power running.One of the unexpected places emerging as a supplier of t...