Italian AI startup iGenius is on track to complete a $1 billion data centre project in southern Italy by the summer, utilizing Nvidia technology. The project, which will span five years, has prompted the company to extend its funding round from an initial target of 650 million euros. CEO Uljan Sharka shared that the new supercomputer built for the data centre will perform at an extraordinary rate, capable of executing 115 billion calculations per second. This marks a significant leap from Europe’s previous top supercomputers, which could handle only 0.5 billion calculations per second until last year.
The data centre will be powered by Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell chips, providing 35 times more computing power than their predecessors, while using 25 times less energy. The facility will house 80 of Nvidia’s most powerful servers, each containing 72 Blackwell chips. Southern Italy was chosen as the site for the project due to its surplus of renewable energy capacity, which will help meet the high power demands of the supercomputing operation.
iGenius, founded in 2016, is one of the few AI startups in Europe valued at over $1 billion, competing with other industry players such as France’s Mistral and Germany’s DeepL. The company recently launched Colosseum 355B, a large language model designed specifically for industries with stringent data protection needs, including finance, heavy industry, and government sectors. iGenius differentiates itself from competitors like OpenAI by providing open-source AI models for companies to run on their own infrastructure, allowing for greater control over sensitive data.