The government has decided to put the stamp of “national strategic preeminence” on the large EdgeConneX project in Lombardy. This is not just a symbolic step: the green light from the Council of Ministers actually opens the way for the appointment of a special commissioner and accelerated authorization procedures for three new data center campuses between the province of Lodi and the southern area of Milan, in what is now presented as one of the main digital infrastructure investments in Italy.
However, some elements remain to be clarified around the operation, starting with the numbers released by the government itself: Mimit speaks of a plan worth 6 billion, Palazzo Chigi of 3 billion direct plus 5 billion indirect expected. Behind the Italian company carrying out the project is an international corporate chain that passes through the Netherlands, lands in the United States, and reaches the Swedish private equity giant EQT, close to the financial galaxy of the Wallenberg family.
THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS’ GREEN LIGHT FOR EDGECONNEX DATA CENTERS
The Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Minister of Enterprises and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso, declared the foreign investment program called “EdgeConneX Campus Italia” to be of “preeminent national strategic interest.” According to what was communicated by Palazzo Chigi, the project foresees the construction by 2031 of three state-of-the-art data center campuses in Lombardy, with over 300 megawatts of total capacity.
The direct investment indicated by the government statement amounts to about 3 billion euros, to which another 5 billion of expected indirect investments would be added. The executive also estimates about 1,500 annual workers during the construction phase and 300 direct employees at full operation, with the possibility of doubling respectively to 3,000 and 600 employees.
The timeline indicated by the government foresees the start of work in the third quarter of 2026, while completion should come by 2031. To accelerate the authorization process, the legislation now allows the appointment of a special government commissioner, in agreement with the Lombardy Region, with the possibility of issuing single authorizations also through derogation ordinances.
One of the main hubs will be located in the Lodi area and, according to Mimit, will be “among the largest in Europe,” with a strong specialization in artificial intelligence applications and workloads related to the cloud.
THE DIFFERENT NUMBERS BETWEEN MIMIT AND PALAZZO CHIGI
The project was accompanied by a numerical discrepancy that emerged within a few hours between the communications of the ministry and those of the Presidency of the Council.
On the afternoon of May 14, in fact, Mimit released a note on the meeting between Urso and the EdgeConneX executives openly speaking of a “total value of 6 billion” for the three new data centers in the province of Lodi and the southern Milan area. A few hours later, however, the official statement of the Council of Ministers indicated a direct investment of 3 billion euros, accompanied by a further 5 billion of expected indirect investments.
It is therefore unclear whether the 6 billion perimeter evoked by Mimit includes only direct investments or already includes part of the induced effects. Nor is it clear how it reconciles with the total figure of 8 billion that instead emerges from the sum of direct and indirect investments reported by Palazzo Chigi.
The divergence is not insignificant, especially considering that the government is building a true national industrial strategy around data centers. During the meeting with the company’s executives, Urso in fact claimed Italy’s growing role as a European hub for advanced digital infrastructures and artificial intelligence, recalling that between 2023 and 2025 over 7 billion investments had already been recorded in the sector, while another 25 billion had been announced for the 2026-2028 three-year period.
WHO EDGECONNEX IS AND HOW IT HAS GROWN
Behind the Lombardy project is EdgeConneX, a global group headquartered in the United States, specialized in infrastructure for data centers, hyperscale, and edge computing. The company currently operates in over 20 countries and declares more than 80 active facilities in over 60 global markets, serving cloud customers, network operators, and technology platforms.
The company was founded in the United States but its international growth accelerated strongly in 2020, when it was acquired by EQT Infrastructure IV, an infrastructure fund of the Swedish group EQT. At that time EQT acquired EdgeConneX from a consortium led by Providence Equity Partners.
The intention, according to EQT itself, was to support the company’s “accelerated growth” through entry into new markets and expansion of existing sites, focusing on the growing demand for digital infrastructures related to cloud, 5G, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and low-latency applications.
Since then the platform has grown rapidly. Since EQT’s entry, EdgeConneX would have increased its capacity by almost twenty times, and the group aims to develop over 10 gigawatts of new data centers in the coming years.
THE ROLE OF EQT AND THE WALLENBERG FAMILY
The true financial orchestrator of the operation remains EQT, one of the largest European private equity and infrastructure groups.
The company was founded in Sweden in 1994 and is historically linked to the Wallenberg family, one of the most influential economic dynasties in Scandinavia. Through the holding company Investor AB and other stakes, the Wallenbergs have had or maintain significant shares in industrial and financial giants such as Ericsson, ABB, SKF, Electrolux, and AstraZeneca.
EQT manages tens of billions of euros in assets and in recent years has strongly focused on digital infrastructures. The EQT Infrastructure IV fund, which acquired EdgeConneX, was launched in 2018 with an endowment of about 9 billion euros and a strategy focused on infrastructure assets with high growth potential.
In EdgeConneX’s capital also appears Sixth Street Partners, a US fund managing assets of over 75 billion dollars. Sixth Street acquired a strategic minority stake directly from EQT funds to support the expansion of data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence and cloud.
The Lombardy plan therefore fits into an international strategy to develop new digital infrastructures dedicated to AI and cloud distributed between Europe and the United States.
THE ITALIAN COMPANY AND ITS ACCOUNTS
The project in Italy is carried forward by EdgeConneX MCN Italy Srl, a company established in Milan on January 19, 2024, and 100% controlled by the Dutch holding EdgeConneX MCN Italy 2 B.V., based in Schiphol-Rijk, the Netherlands. The parent company became the sole shareholder in May 2025 as part of an internal group reorganization, while the 2024 financial statements of the Italian company confirm belonging to a structure with a Dutch parent company.
The company is still operationally inactive, but the corporate purpose is explicitly built around the real estate and infrastructural development of data centers: from the design and construction of technological plants and data storage structures to the management and maintenance of digital campuses. The sole director is the Dutchman Dick Theunissen.
The first filed financial statement portrays a structure still in the start-up phase but already engaged in preparing the Lombardy operation.
As of December 31, 2024, the company showed tangible fixed assets of over 3 million euros, with total assets of about 3.17 million and debts of about 3.25 million. Equity was negative by about 80 thousand euros due to a net loss of 193,811 euros. Revenues were still zero, but the income statement already shows over 124 thousand euros of interest expenses towards parent companies, a sign of intragroup financing already activated in the preparatory phase of the operation.
THE ITALIAN RACE FOR DATA CENTERS
The project for the three data centers in Lombardy fits into the government’s strategy to attract investments in digital infrastructures and artificial intelligence, but also in the broader European attempt to strengthen its technological autonomy and data processing capacity compared to the major US and Asian hubs.
With the green light from the Council of Ministers, the Lombardy plan now accelerates towards the operational phase: the timeline foresees the opening of construction sites in the third quarter of 2026 and the completion of the three campuses by 2031. The government intends for the Lodi hub to become one of the main European hubs for workloads related to artificial intelligence.
