Chinese Internet company NetEase Inc. has broken ground on a new data center in Guizhou province.

China Daily reports the company this month began construction of its ‘first big data center’ in the Guian New Area in southwest China.

Sat on 7.3 hectares, the site will serve NetEase's operations and have capacity for 10,000 racks at full build-out. The first phase of the project is reportedly estimated to enter trial operation in September, and 5,000 data center racks will be installed over the next five years.

Founded in 1997, NetEase develops and operates online PC and mobile games, advertising services, search engines, email services, music streaming, and eCommerce platforms in China. The company also owns a number of pig farms.

According to its 2021 ESG report, NetEase has offices campuses in Hangzhou, Beijing, and Guangzhou and an undisclosed number of leased data centers; the 2020 ESG report suggests they are located in Hangzhou and Beijing. The company is also an AWS customer.

The likes of Huawei, Tencent, and Apple operate data centers in Guizhou.