Damac and AiOnX are developing data center projects in Pregnana Milanese, a small town outside Milan, in northern Italy.

The DAMAC Digital MIL01 data center, developed by the UAE property conglomerate, is on the former site of the Gefco-Citroën factory. The facility will span 55,000 square meters (592,015 sq ft) and is expected to be operational from the end of 2028.

The initial power request submitted to Terna, Italy’s transmission operator, for the data center is 200MW, according to data from Data Center Map.

Last month, Damac’s data center arm, Damac Digital, said it plans to achieve an IT capacity landbank of 6GW across 13 countries and more than 35 sites in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Italy is one of the company’s European markets.

The second data center project in the town is AiOnX’s Pregnana Innovation Campus. The London-based digital infrastructure company is developing the project after acquiring a land site valued at €125 million ($142m) in October 2024, according to an investor information pack from SWI Group, AiOnX’s parent company.

The Pregnana Innovation Campus will span 220,000 sqm (2.36m sq ft) and will have a total capacity of 150MW after SWI Group said it secured 60MW of additional power from the national transmission operator.

The site is located near a network connection point and has access to a major road.

SWI said in February that work was ongoing to obtain outline planning approval and it expected the project to be completed in around three years.

Italian news website Il Post reported that there’s a third data center project being developed in Pregnana Milanese, but DCD was unable to independently verify it.

The Lombardy region of Italy has become a data center hub for major technology companies. Major hyperscalers, including Google, Microsoft, and AWS, already operate cloud regions in the region.

Most of the data centers are concentrated around the Milan metropolitan area, which has approximately 100 facilities operational or under development.

The city of Milan is expected to add 2GW of capacity over the next five years – a tenfold increase from current 200MW levels.

Learn more about the data center market in Italy and Southern Europe, and meet with other executives and experts from the region at the DCN Milan event next year