Retelit's €350 Million Plan Includes an AI Data Center in Corsico
Milan is confirmed as the main Italian hub for the new generation of data centers, with increasing pressure on installed capacity alongside the arrival of international hyperscalers and the demand for infrastructure designed for artificial intelligence workloads. In this context, Retelit has announced the start of construction for a new site in Corsico, on the west outskirts of the Lombard capital, on a disused industrial area that belonged to the Marcegaglia group. The first capacity release is expected by 2027.
A 13.6 MW Facility Designed for AI Loads
The project includes two twin buildings covering a total area of 18,000 square meters, with a total power capacity of 13.6 MW. The choice of site comes a few months after the land acquisition, strategically located relative to the ring road and functionally connected to the rest of the group's network. The area previously hosted two industrial warehouses and a three-story office building: the regeneration of the former steel site is one of the elements on which Retelit is focusing in its relationship with the municipal administration, also with a view to making waste heat available for the district heating network to benefit local families and businesses.
On a technical level, the facility adopts closed-loop water cooling, motivated by the desire not to impact the local water resources, integrated with direct liquid cooling systems for servers intended for AI workloads. This is a relevant point, as a next-generation server for training and inference can produce up to ten times the heat of a traditional server, and air cooling is no longer sufficient when densities exceed a certain threshold. Compliance with the reliability standards of hyperscalers also allows positioning the site in the enterprise client market, in addition to cloud and edge computing services.
A Piece of the €350 Million Plan
The Corsico site is the first concrete realization of the three-year investment plan announced last year, with a total value of €350 million. The roadmap also includes a second data center in Milan at Bisceglie, on buildings already acquired and to be converted, and is integrated into a network that currently includes 38 owned sites, spread between Treviso and Bari. At the center of the infrastructure is the Avalon Campus, the interconnection hub that hosts over 170 operators, content delivery networks, media, and OTT, presented by the company as the largest in the country.
The framework has further expanded with the establishment of Retelit-X, which integrates BT's Italian operations and infrastructure and adds 11,500 kilometers of optical fiber, bringing the total network to over 47,500 kilometers, along with the agreement for the acquisition of Sparkle, the main international wholesale operator and key player in submarine cables, conducted in conjunction with the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
"We firmly believe in Italy’s role as the future digital hub of the Mediterranean and want to support this growth by investing in data centers, which are necessary pillars to support technological developments related to artificial intelligence and remain a crucial asset in our strategy," stated Jorge Álvarez, CEO of Retelit, emphasizing the choice to build on already developed areas while combining sustainability and reliability standards.
For Retelit, the issue is not only about installed capacity. The network of owned data centers also enables the company to position itself as a digital sovereignty operator, capable of keeping Italian companies' data within the physical and regulatory borders of the country, with reduced latency and a controlled infrastructure supply chain. This position, in a market where the presence of global hyperscalers is set to grow even further, defines the perimeter within which a national operator can differentiate itself.