Microsoft plans to invest 4.3 billion euros ($4.8 billion) over the next two years to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure in northern Italy, it said on Wednesday.
Microsoft said in a statement that the investment would be the American company’s largest in Italy to date. It will turn the ItalyNorth cloud region into one of the largest Microsoft data centers in Europe and will serve as a data center also for the Mediterranean and North Africa.
Microsoft President Brad Smith met Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Wednesday, the prime minister’s office said in a note, adding that the government welcomed an investment that would strengthen Italy’s digital role in the Mediterranean.
On Monday, Meloni met with the head of the US fund BlackRock Inc, Larry Fink, who traveled to Rome to discuss possible investments in data centers and support for energy infrastructure.
BlackRock and Microsoft last month announced a fund valued at more than $30 billion to invest in AI-focused data centers, AI supply chains and energy sourcing, saying the vehicle would focus first on the U.S. market and then in the United States’ partner countries.
Demand for AI and cloud services is growing rapidly, with companies in industries as diverse as gaming and e-commerce differentiating their offerings by integrating custom AI models, programs that use pattern recognition to make decisions.
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