Retelit Begins Construction of AI-Ready Data Center in Milan, Expanding Avalon Campus Ecosystem
May 7, 2026
Retelit Begins Construction of AI-Ready Data Center in Milan, Expanding Avalon Campus Ecosystem
Italian B2B telecom operator Retelit has officially broken ground on a new data center in Corsico, a municipality southwest of Milan, marking a significant step in its multi-year investment strategy to strengthen Italy’s digital infrastructure. The facility, once completed, will become part of the company’s Avalon Campus ecosystem, which Retelit describes as the largest neutral colocation data center ecosystem in Italy.
The company acquired the land—a former industrial site near a ring road—from steelmaker Marcegaglia several months ago. The new data center will span 193,750 square feet (18,000 square meters) across two identical buildings, with a total capacity of 13.6 megawatts designed specifically to support artificial intelligence workloads. Retelit emphasized that the facility will be built using advanced, low-environmental-impact technologies and will meet the strict reliability standards demanded by major cloud providers.
To protect the local water table, the data center will employ closed-loop water cooling systems, which will be integrated with liquid cooling solutions for AI servers that generate more heat than traditional servers. In a move toward energy efficiency and community integration, waste heat from the facility will be repurposed to power local homes and businesses through a district heating network.
The Corsico project is part of Retelit’s three-year investment plan worth €350 million ($411 million), announced last year by chief executive Jorge Álvarez. “We strongly believe in Italy's role as the future digital hub of the Mediterranean and we want to support this growth by investing in data centers, which are the essential pillars underpinning the technological developments tied to AI and remain a crucial asset of our strategy,” Álvarez said. He added that the company chose to build on an already developed site, “combining sustainability with excellence in performance, security, reliability, and efficiency.”
The Corsico municipal administration welcomed the development, stating that “data centers are strategic national infrastructure, essential to supporting progress through technology.” The administration noted the importance of regenerating brownfield areas in keeping with environmental sustainability, particularly through waste heat recovery fed into the district heating network, calling it “a virtuous model of development.”
Retelit’s broader investment strategy also includes the development of another facility in Milan’s Bisceglie district. The company currently owns and operates 38 data centers across Italy, which it says are crucial for reducing latency and supporting Italy’s digital sovereignty. In October 2025, Retelit completed the acquisition of BT Italy’s operations, expanding its fiber optic network to over 47,000 kilometers (29,204 miles) and adding four data centers in the metropolitan areas of Rome and Milan.
The Avalon Campus ecosystem currently hosts more than 170 operators, content delivery networks, media companies, and over-the-top (OTT) service providers. Separately, Bloomberg reported earlier this year that Retelit was considering selling its data center portfolio for €700 million ($830 million), with sources indicating the sale could take place in 2027. However, those sources stressed that no final decisions had been made.
Source: datacenterdynamics
