Italy data centre group expects €36.9B investment by 2036 on AI demand
The Italian Datacenter Association (IDA) presented 2026 market research at its Data Center Symposium in Rome on October 8 estimating that Italy's commercial data centres could attract about €36.9 billion ($41.5 billion) of investment through 2036, driven by AI and cloud demand. IT capacity in Italian commercial data centres stood at 460 megawatts in 2025 and is expected to reach roughly 2.3 gigawatts by 2031, about five times as much, with Milan and Lombardy still the core of the market while projects emerge in Piedmont, Puglia and Sardinia. The study also notes a gap between plans and construction: firms have requested grid connections of between 60 and more than 100 gigawatts, but only about 1.9 gigawatts of projects are at an advanced stage, and from 2023 to 2025 the sector spent €7.1 billion of the €10.5 billion planned, about 68%.
Why it matters: AI compute demand is turning southern Europe into a data centre investment hotspot, but the gap between connection requests and projects actually under way shows power and permits remain the binding constraints.
References Bloomberg Technology · The Next Web
Italy’s data center buildout could attract some €36.9 billion ($41.5 billion) of investment through 2036, as artificial intelligence and cloud computing fuel a rapid expansion of capacity, according to a study commissioned by an industry group.
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