IT4LIA AI Factory
Announced; CINECA is recorded as an operator of this site
EuroHPC JU procurement contract signed 22 April 2026 (EUR 290,000,000 for acquisition/delivery/installation/maintenance) for a liquid-cooled NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 system (Grace CPU + Blackwell GPU + Quantum-X800 InfiniBand), plus a dedicated inference partition with Axelera AI (European) accelerators and SiPearl (European) CPUs. Primary source states the system "is expected to deliver more than 160 Exaflops of peak AI inference performance" — verbatim, AI-inference precision; NOT a training-FLOPS claim. Hosted and operated by CINECA at the DAMA Tecnopolo of Bologna. Co-funded 50% by EuroHPC JU (via the Digital Europe Programme) and 50% by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR). Part of the EU's AI Factories initiative — distinct from CINECA's pre-existing general-purpose EuroHPC systems at the same Tecnopolo campus (Leonardo, Marconi-100).
Date in site records: Apr 22, 2026. Site data: EuroHPC JU press announcements (Apr 2026).
Ownership and operation
Site operator CINECA. “The IT4LIA AI Factory initiative, which is hosted and operated by CINECA at the DAMA Tecnopolo of Bologna, is moving into its next phase” source
Procured the system (as last stated) EuroHPC JU. The organisation's own statement states procurement of the system. “The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has signed a procurement contract with E4 Computer Engineering and Dell Technologies to deploy a new AI-optimised supercomputer for the IT4LIA AI Factory in Italy.” source
Recorded owner attribution withheld EuroHPC JU. The cited source does not establish that this organisation holds title to the site. “The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has signed a procurement contract with E4 Computer Engineering and Dell Technologies to deploy a new AI-optimised supercomputer for the IT4LIA AI Factory in Italy.” source
Export controls and government links
The site’s companies and their recorded parents were checked; no export-control designation, sovereign investment or classified jurisdiction was found. Headquarters country is unrecorded for 2 companies, leaving their jurisdiction checks incomplete.
Capacity
No power figure is recorded for this site.
Methods and sources
Ownership roles
Title identifies the legal owner of the site; operation identifies who runs it. AI-hardware ownership follows the catalog’s attribution of the machines inside, whose owner may lease the facility.
Each role requires its own attribution. An operator named in a source supplies evidence of operation only.
Parent companies
Ownership checks start with each company named at the site and follow recorded parent relationships. A company holding several roles is checked once. Its linked company page lists the relationships and their sources; further parents may remain undocumented.
Level 1 identifies a company at the site, level 2 its parent, and each further level another parent. Export-control designations and government investments are assigned to the company concerned.
Missing values
Unrecorded roles remain blank. Findings whose company position is unresolved stay in the list with that position labelled unknown.
Publication limits
Subscription corporate data helps identify parent relationships and sovereign investments. Publication is limited to relationship classes and supporting public sources; licensed records, identifiers and values are withheld.
Related analysis
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