IT4LIA AI Factory Secures €290M EuroHPC Investment for Advanced Supercomputer

Italy Invests in High-Performance AI Infrastructure with New AI Supercomputer

Italy is set to make a significant public investment in advancing its AI capabilities with the commissioning of a new AI supercomputer at the IT4LIA AI factory in Bologna. The project is a collaboration between the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), E4 Computer Engineering, and Dell Technologies.

The initiative, with a total budget of €290 million, is funded by the Digital Europe Programme (DEP) and co-financed by Italy’s Ministry of University and Research. The new system, expected to deliver over 160 exaflops of peak AI inference performance, will play a crucial role in anchoring Italy’s AI factory within a broader European network, providing extensive AI compute capacity for startups, SMEs, and researchers working on data-intensive applications.

Anders Jensen, Executive Director of EuroHPC JU, emphasized the importance of the IT4LIA system in empowering the European innovation ecosystem and strengthening Europe’s competitiveness in AI.

The Purpose of the IT4LIA AI Factory

The IT4LIA AI factory is part of a larger EuroHPC initiative aimed at establishing a network of AI factories across Europe. With 19 facilities and 13 antenna sites planned, the factory’s primary goal is to provide accessible, high-performance AI computing to businesses and researchers, particularly SMEs and startups, who may lack the resources to build or access such systems.

Since April 2025, the IT4LIA AI factory has been operational using existing systems, including the Leonardo supercomputer. The introduction of the new AI supercomputer represents a significant advancement, transitioning the site into a fully scaled AI factory with dedicated infrastructure for training and inference workloads.

Technology Behind the AI Supercomputer

The AI supercomputer, to be integrated by E4 Computer Engineering and manufactured by Dell Technologies, features liquid-cooled architecture and NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 technology. It combines NVIDIA Grace CPUs with Blackwell GPUs, interconnected via Quantum X800 InfiniBand networking, optimized for large-scale AI workloads focusing on throughput, scalability, and energy efficiency.

The system’s projected performance of over 160 exaflops is geared towards AI inference, aligning it with real-world deployment needs. A unified data layer through the VAST Data platform will streamline data access and management across workloads, with a dedicated inference partition integrating accelerators from Axelera AI and CPUs from SiPearl.

Benefits and Users of the AI Factory

The primary beneficiaries of the AI factory are startups and SMEs, providing them access to advanced AI computing without the burden of building their infrastructure. Additionally, the wider research community can utilize the system for developing and deploying AI applications across various sectors such as agritech, cybersecurity, climate and meteorology, and manufacturing.

The factory offers both vertical and horizontal services, including sector-specific support and cross-sector tools like secure data management and compliance verification. Training and skills development are also integral components of the ecosystem, supporting adoption from experimentation to deployment.

Contribution to Europe’s AI Strategy

The IT4LIA project aligns with Europe’s efforts to establish a secure and sovereign AI infrastructure, ensuring compliance with EU data protection standards. The system’s European partition aims to optimize inference workloads while maintaining control over sensitive data, emphasizing autonomy in hardware and software layers.

The deployment of the AI factory in Bologna signifies a shift towards coordinated, high-capacity AI infrastructure designed for sustained industrial and research use, reducing barriers to innovation while maintaining critical capabilities under European control.