Recently, the partnership between DeepSeek and Ulanqab has drawn considerable interest. DeepSeek intends to construct a data center in the area with a capacity of roughly 1GW, utilizing over 160,000 Huawei Ascend 910B chips, with the nominal chip investment surpassing 40 billion yuan. Simultaneously, DeepSeek is gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Science and Technology Innovation Board and is set to unveil a new model, with the objective of producing a large volume of tokens at a minimal cost. In August 2026, Ulanqab inked deals for 12 projects related to intelligent computing centers, securing an investment exceeding 130 billion yuan and pledging to establish a data center with a capacity of 12.5GW, comparable in scale to OpenAI's 'Stargate'.

Ulanqab's appeal to numerous projects stems not only from its strategic proximity to Beijing, low network latency, and low average annual temperature—which facilitates reduced energy consumption by leveraging natural cooling sources—but also from its inclusion in the relatively autonomous Western Inner Mongolia Power Grid. This grid boasts a well-developed electricity trading market and a substantial share of green energy. Companies can secure multi-year power purchase agreements to stabilize electricity costs, while the locally adopted 'incremental distribution network + direct green power supply' model further boosts the proportion of green energy consumption and enhances cost predictability.

Nonetheless, the local computing power sector still confronts hurdles. Presently, the average GPU utilization rate in domestic intelligent computing centers stands at less than 30%, and certain signed projects remain unimplemented due to land allocation issues. The industry is still in its investment phase and must shift from merely 'possessing computing power' to 'securing orders,' establishing efficient token production lines to demonstrate that it can emerge as the region with the lowest overall cost for producing millions of tokens.