Countries / Europe
Italy
Italy has the first dedicated national AI law among EU members, a EuroHPC AI Factory in Bologna and a grid queue of about 95 GW of data centre requests.
Law No. 132/2025 entered into force on 10 October 2025. It names national supervisory authorities, extends the text and data mining exception to AI with a rights-holder opt-out and creates new criminal offences, while adding no obligations beyond the EU AI Act. Government delegated decrees are still to come. On compute, the CINECA-run Leonardo system and the IT4LIA AI Factory sit in Bologna. On power, Terna had logged 95.38 GW of data centre connection requests by 21 August 2026, though only 1.88 GW across 15 applications had reached the most advanced stage. For someone seeking compute, public capacity is in Bologna and the AI Factory start date is still to be confirmed, while private builders face a long, speculative grid queue concentrated around Milan.
AI policy and activity
EuroHPC describes IT4LIA as aligned with the Italian Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2024-2026. It is coordinated by CINECA, with Austria and Slovenia participating, and co-funded by the research ministry, the national cybersecurity agency and the Emilia-Romagna Region among others. Key sectors are agri-food, earth sciences, cybersecurity and manufacturing.
Power and grid
Terna recorded 95.38 GW of data centre connection requests on 21 August 2026, up from 1 GW in 2021. Lombardy alone accounts for 290 applications totalling 46 GW. Of 531 applications to date, only 15 (1.88 GW) are at the most advanced stage, so most of the queue is speculative. Source is Il Sole 24 Ore, machine-translated, citing Terna.
Data centres and compute
| Site | Where | Status | Notes and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leonardo CINECA | Bologna Technopole | Operating | EuroHPC lists 249.04 petaflops sustained, 13,824 NVIDIA Ampere GPUs and a 1,240 square metre computing room. It ranks #12 on the June 2026 TOP500. (source) |
| IT4LIA AI Factory systems CINECA | Bologna Technopole | Planned | EuroHPC says Leonardo, the LISA system and the GAIA cloud will be combined with a new AI-optimised system from early 2026, giving over 20,000 GPUs overall. We did not confirm that the new system is live. (source) |
Rules and programmes
| Instrument | Kind | Status | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Law No. 132/2025 on artificial intelligence | Law | In force from 10 October 2025 | Law-firm summary, not the official text. It reports entry into force on 10 October 2025, designated national authorities, new copyright and text and data mining rules and new criminal offences, and says the law adds no obligations beyond the AI Act. Much depends on delegated decrees. |
| EuroHPC AI Factory: IT4LIA | Programme | In force | EuroHPC page for the Bologna AI Factory. It lists services as available from a date still to be confirmed and says up to 30 proof-of-concept projects will be funded each year for start-ups and SMEs. |
Checked on 2 October 2026 and due for review by 1 January 2027. Many sources are trade press or law-firm summaries rather than official texts, and statuses such as reported or unconfirmed are shown as the source gives them. This is a summary, not legal advice. If something is wrong or out of date, tell us.