Future of the cloud? From spas to orbital space data centers

By Finance News On Dec 29, 2025

Lenovo in partnership with AKT II and Mamou-Mani imagines the data centers of the future: a data center spa

James Cheung, partner at Mamou-Mani

Artificial intelligence is advancing at breakneck speed, forcing a rethink of how the power-hungry servers behind the boom can coexist with — and draw less from — the environment.

Data centers form the backbone of the internet, underpinnning nearly every digital service. But the facilities require huge amounts of energy and water, and are often considered an eyesore and a burden on the communities that house them. As more AI workloads are scaled into the facilities, the pressure on power supply chains will intensify.

There’s going to be a “tipping point,” where the architecture of data centers will no longer be fit for purpose, Simone Larsson, head of enterprise AI at Lenovo, told CNBC.

In the face of a looming digital infrastructure crisis, tech giants and developers of the expensive infrastructure are exploring sustainable and out-of-the-box solutions.

Data spas and villages

Traditional data centers are failing to efficiently power AI workloads and falling short of sustainability targets and compliance demands, according to the “Data Center of the Future” November study carried out by Lenovo in partnership with Opinium.

The study found that the majority of IT decision makers prioritize technology partners who reduce energy, but only 46% of those surveyed said their current data center designs supported sustainability goals.

In the face of those challenges, Lenovo has worked with architects from Mamou-Mani and engineers from AKT II to design data centers that can integrate better with the environment and address energy limitations. The outcome: designs that see data centers sequestered underground by utilizing disused tunnels or bunkers, or suspended in the air to make use of 24/7 energy from solar power.

Lenovo in partnership with AKT II and Mamou-Mani imagines the data centers of the future: a data center bunker that utilizes disused tunnels or transport systems.

James Cheung, Mamou-Mani

In so-called data villages, servers are stacked in a modular format near urban areas, allowing excess heat from the data centers to be transferred to power local amenities like schools or homes. The same goes for data center spas, which would see excess heat from data centers used in a wellbeing setting. The heat generated by the spa could in turn be repurposed to power cooling technology for the data center.

But there’s a catch: even Lenovo admits its designs will likely not be feasible until 2055 or later.

The company said its study was designed to spark discussion and acknowledged that significant regulatory changes would be required before any such designs could be deployed. The cost and engineering complexity of some of the concepts, as well as legal and scalability constraints, also present challenges.

Adoption would also vary widely by region. The U.S., for example, is more likely to adopt large-scale,…