IT4LIA

IT4LIA is the Italian AI Factory, funded by the Horizon Europe programme, to promote innovation and the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Italy and across Europe.

The IT4LIA AI Factory aims to provide cutting-edge infrastructure, support services, and training pathways for developers, businesses, and public administrations. The initiative focuses on strategic sectors such as agrifood, cybersecurity, earth sciences, and manufacturing, while placing strong emphasis on ethics, data security, and the integration of social sciences and humanities to ensure the responsible and inclusive development of AI.

Selected as one of 13 factories by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) of the European Commission, IT4LIA includes the acquisition of a new supercomputer optimized for artificial intelligence, and the creation of a comprehensive portfolio of services and initiatives targeted at startups, SMEs, public administrations, and researchers.

The project's ambition is to build a qualified one-stop shop to support national and European systems across the entire AI value chain. Its core objective is to foster the adoption of AI by businesses, public institutions, and academia in key economic sectors, and to boost the growth of highly innovative companies, particularly startups — thereby also contributing to European technological sovereignty.

ART-ER is a key partner in the IT4LIA AI Factory, working to maximize the impact of the project's opportunities for the regional ecosystem — including companies, startups, public bodies, and research institutions — and to stimulate the development of a local AI innovation ecosystem. ART-ER plays a pivotal role through actions in open innovation, technology transfer, acceleration, and skills development, leveraging its expertise in fostering innovation ecosystems, connecting stakeholders, and driving collaboration between universities, industry, and startups. Thanks to the coordination of the European Digital Innovation Hub ER2Digit, ART-ER will lead awareness-raising and capacity-building activities aimed at public sector bodies and other Italian EDIHs, acting as an "AI Gateway".

Among the co-funders is the Emilia-Romagna Region, which has long supported the strategic use of big data for territorial development. The goal is to enable the emergence of innovation projects that allow all businesses and territories to experiment with and adopt tools based on generative artificial intelligence.