If you’ve spent any time on the internet lately, you've probably heard of DeepSeek. It’s the AI that basically set the tech world on fire by doing what OpenAI does, but for a fraction of the price. Naturally, everyone is asking: where is this thing actually running? People have some wild theories. I've seen forum posts claiming it's all running on a secret satellite or hidden in a mountain.
The truth is a lot more grounded, though honestly, just as cool.
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Most of the "where are DeepSeek data centers located" mystery comes from the fact that this isn't a Silicon Valley company. It’s based in China. That means the physical servers—the actual silicon and copper making the magic happen—are tucked away in spots most Western users have never even heard of.
The High-Flyer Connection in Hangzhou
First off, you’ve gotta know who’s behind the curtain. DeepSeek is a project by High-Flyer Quant. They’re a massive hedge fund based in Hangzhou. If you look up their corporate headquarters, you’ll find them at the Huijin International Building in the Gongshu District.
Hangzhou isn't just some random city; it’s basically China’s answer to Seattle or San Jose. It’s where Alibaba lives. DeepSeek’s primary R&D and their original "Fire-Flyer" clusters are located right there in the Zhejiang Province.
Why Hangzhou Matters
- Talent Pool: Being in the same backyard as Alibaba means they have access to some of the best infrastructure engineers on the planet.
- High-Flyer’s Private Stash: Since DeepSeek started as a spin-off of a quant fund, they already had massive server farms for high-frequency trading. They didn't have to go out and rent space from Amazon; they just built their own.
The Undersea Secret in Hainan
This is the part that sounds like a Bond movie. DeepSeek actually uses an underwater data center off the coast of Lingshui, Hainan Island.
I’m not kidding.
They’ve got these massive, sealed server capsules sitting on the seafloor. Why? Because the ocean is cold. Cooling a data center is the most expensive part of running an AI. By putting the servers at the bottom of the South China Sea, they use the natural temperature of the water to keep the chips from melting.
As of early 2026, this Hainan subsea cluster has expanded. It’s now handling roughly 7,000 concurrent conversations per second. It’s operated by a company called Shenzhen HiCloud, and DeepSeek is one of their biggest "tenants." If you’re using the app during peak hours, there’s a decent chance your prompt is being processed by a server sitting 30 meters underwater.
The "AI Backbone" in Northern China
While Hangzhou is the brain, the heavy lifting—the actual training of models like DeepSeek-V3—happens in the north.
If you want to find the real muscle, look at Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. This place has become a massive hub for intelligent computing. The Horinger New Area in Hohhot houses the China Mobile flagship facility, which is one of the largest single AI computing sites in the world.
DeepSeek’s training clusters are heavily concentrated here. They use a mix of NVIDIA H800 GPUs and, increasingly, domestic Chinese chips like the Huawei Ascend 910C. The dry, cool climate of Inner Mongolia makes it way cheaper to run tens of thousands of GPUs 24/7 without the hardware catching fire.
Wait, Is Anything in the U.S. or Saudi Arabia?
Here is where it gets a little complicated.
Technically, DeepSeek is a Chinese company. Their privacy policy is pretty blunt: "We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China."
However, they’ve been expanding. At the LEAP conference in Riyadh, it was announced that DeepSeek is now running on Aramco Digital’s data centers in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. This is a big deal. It’s their first major footprint outside of China. For users in the Middle East, this means lower latency and data that stays within the region.
But for those of us in the U.S. or Europe?
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If you use the official DeepSeek app, your data is heading to those clusters in Hangzhou or Inner Mongolia. However, because DeepSeek is "open weights," companies like Perplexity, Groq, and Together AI have downloaded the model and hosted it on their own servers in the United States and Europe.
So, it depends on how you use it.
- DeepSeek App/Website: China (Hangzhou/Hainan/Hohhot).
- Groq/Perplexity: U.S. based data centers.
- Self-Hosted: Your own basement or office.
Why Location Is Such a Headache
People get nervous about the location because of data sovereignty. In 2025, South Korea actually raised some red flags about DeepSeek transferring data back to China. It’s a valid concern. If you’re a government employee or working on top-secret tech, you probably shouldn't be pasting your code into the DeepSeek web interface.
The irony? DeepSeek is actually more transparent about their hardware than many U.S. companies. We know they used a cluster of 2,048 NVIDIA H800 GPUs for the V3 training. We know they use InfiniBand for their inter-node connections. They’ve even published technical reports detailing exactly how they optimized their training to work around U.S. chip sanctions.
Practical Steps for You
If you're worried about where your data is going but still want to use the tech, you have options. Honestly, you've got three real choices:
- Use a Proxy Service: If you access DeepSeek through a provider like OpenRouter or Groq, your data stays with that provider (usually in the U.S.) and only the "tokens" are sent to the model.
- Run it Locally: If you have a beefy Mac or a PC with a good GPU, download Ollama. You can run DeepSeek-R1 (the distilled versions) completely offline. No data centers involved.
- Enterprise API: If you're a business, use their API but ensure you're using the "Dammam" endpoint if you're in that region, or stick to a Western-hosted API wrapper.
DeepSeek isn't just a chatbot; it's a massive physical infrastructure project spanning from the seafloor of Hainan to the deserts of Saudi Arabia. Knowing where those servers sit helps you decide exactly how much you want to trust them with your data.