In the golden hills of Puglia, a southern region of Italy known today for its olive trees, white cliffs and turquoise mediterranean coves, Lorenzo Avello has artificial intelligence on his mind. Avello’s relatively unknown company, Adriatic DC, is looking to develop three massive data centers in the area, including a campus capable of turning 1.5 gigawatts of electricity into computing power for artificial intelligence services — easily eclipsing the capacity of most of today’s largest AI facilities. A single gigawatt is enough to power up to 750,000 US homes at any given time. The goal, he said, is to establish “a Mediterranean AI hub.” Avello has never built a data center. Before this, he worked on renewable energy projects. Thousands of newcomers with little to no computing capacity today are hoping to claim a piece of the AI infrastructure gold rush. If every data center in the trillion-dollar pipeline gets built, a Shark Tank television show host will own a computing empire in the oil- and gas-rich province of Alberta, and a five-year-old Bitcoin mining firm will run one of the largest data centers in the US by 2027.

Full commentary : Big Tech’s dominance of AI infrastructure is shrinking as a host of other players pile into the arena — with global economic consequences.