Italy has designated a major data center development tied to EdgeConneX, US based global data center and digital infrastructure provider, as a project of strategic national interest to accelerate the permitting pathway as the Italian government seeks to expand AI-related infrastructure. The project, located in Lombardy, involves €3 billion (US$ 3.5 billion) in direct investment to build three data center campuses by 2031. These combined campuses are expected to exceed 300 MW of capacity with one site dedicated to support AI-related workloads and could become among the largest facilities in Europe.
Adolfo Urso, Industry Minister, Italy, described a broader €6 billion (US$ 7 billion) value for three facilities in the Lodi area and south of Milan, reflecting differences in how the government is framing direct capital spending versus wider economic activity as reported by Reuters.
In a statement to the publication Urso revealed, “The total investment amounts to around €3 billion euros, the project involves the construction, by 2031, of three state-of-the-art data center campuses in the Lombardy Region, with over 300 MW of capacity and an expected €5 billion euros in additional indirect investments.”
According to a report by the NextGen Tech Insider, the planned deployment is focused on high-density environments designed to support modern workload requirements, including AI inference and large-scale data processing. Although detailed hardware configurations for the Lombardy sites have not been fully disclosed, the scale of investment suggests a strong emphasis on edge computing integration, enabling localized compute resources that reduce latency for real-time applications.
This scalable connectivity is designed to improve interconnection between regional enterprises and global cloud providers, supporting hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. The infrastructure incorporates high-density power management systems capable of handling the significant thermal and electrical demands of next-generation GPU clusters used for generative AI training and inference workloads.
The designation under Italy’s 2023 investment framework allows the government to appoint a commissioner to coordinate approvals across regional and national bodies. The goal is to streamline permitting for infrastructure that typically requires multiple environmental, planning, and grid-related authorizations.
Italy’s government is also positioning the announcement as part of a broader data center strategy. Officials say the country attracted more than €7 billion (US$ 8.1 billion) in related investment between 2023 and 2025, with a further €25 billion (US$ 29 billion) announced for 2026–2028, though these figures include projects at different stages of commitment as reported by 24 Economy.
The decision comes as European governments compete to attract AI infrastructure investment while facing constraints in power supply, permitting timelines, and grid expansion. Data center developers have increasingly warned that delivery speed, not demand, is the main bottleneck.