A groundbreaking ceremony has been held for a new data center in Slovenia.

Announced by Slovenia’s government, the new data center will house a supercomputer and an “AI factory” for the country.

Ground was broken on May 6 at the site in Maribor. According to a report from the Slovenia Times, €18 million ($20.21m) will be invested in the data center, which, once completed, will be operated by the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES).

The data center should be completed in mid-2026, at which point it will house a new supercomputer and the “Slovenian AI Factory,” an EU-sponsored project which is valued at €150m ($168.4m).

Details about the upcoming supercomputer were not shared, including the hardware used and its expected compute power.

The project was selected by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) for funding, along with “AI factories” in 12 other EU countries. It will also be Slovenia’s second supercomputer after the Vega HPC system, which is also located in Maribor.

Plans for the data center and the respective HPC systems were first announced in June 2024. At the time, it was revealed that the data center would be located on land adjacent to the headquarters of DEM, a state-owned company that operates hydropower stations on the Drava River.

Waste heat from the data center will be used by the local district heating network, sent via the hot water distribution network, which is owned by the Municipality of Maribor and operated by Energetika Maribor.

Slovenia’s Prime Minister, Robert Golob, attended the groundbreaking ceremony. Speaking on the project, Golob said: “We are bringing the data collected from different locations together in one place, combining it with supercomputing capacity and an artificial intelligence factory, all while integrating a sustainability component.

“The project combines clean energy from the Drava River and the use of excess heat to warm the city of Maribor, and this component will make the whole project sustainable.”

According to the ARNES website, the data center will also have solar panels on the roof.

Golob added: “This is a symbolic beginning of a new era, in which the Drava will once again be a driving force in the development of Maribor. This time not through industry, but through knowledge, artificial intelligence, and, above all, shaping a better future for the entire country,” he concluded.

Slovenia has one existing supercomputer – the Vega system – which launched in April 2021. Vega – which was provided by Atos – has 6.9 petaflops of computing power.