Iñigo Urkullu presides over the laying of the first stone of ADI DATA CENTER EUSKADI on the Abanto Campus of the Euskadi Technology Park

The Lehendakari of the Basque Government, Iñigo Urkullu, presided over the ceremony to lay the first stone of ADI DATA CENTER EUSKADI on the Abanto Campus of the Euskadi Technology Park, which was also attended by, the Regional Minister for Economic Development, Arantxa Tapia, the Deputy General of Bizkaia, Elixabete Etxanobe and the Mayor of Abanto-Zierbena, Iñaki Urrutia, accompanied by the President of ADI, Roberto Tobillas and the entire Board of Directors. The event was also attended by members of the Basque Government, as well as other institutional authorities and various representatives of the Basque industrial, economic and business fabric.

“Atlantic Data Infrastructure (ADI) is a new technological-industrial project, based in the Basque Country, focused on the security, availability, connectivity and sustainability of infrastructures for information services.

Created by Euskaltel, Teknei Group, Dominion and the Basque Government, it was created with the aim of becoming a set of top-level data centres to support the digital transformation of companies and institutions in the Basque Country. To this end, in the coming months, new public and private partners are expected to join the shareholding structure.

To this end, as a result of public-private collaboration, ADI is going to undertake an investment project in a first facility that will provide services from the beginning of 2025, “followed by a second and possibly a third, in locations distributed throughout the different territories of the Basque Country”. The creation of this new state-of-the-art data processing technology infrastructure will enable the proliferation of an ecosystem of digital companies, with the consequent “economic and social impact on the area, with the creation of 30 direct jobs in the first datacenter and many more indirect jobs”, according to Roberto Tobillas, President of ADI.

This project is set to become the data centre of reference in the Atlantic area, through advanced services for the public and private sector, which will provide “excellence, reliability, sustainability, scalability and proximity”. This project is being managed in an open and inclusive manner, with a view to providing our area of influence with the best infrastructures. We hope to provide a service to Basque society, doing our bit to generate employment, wealth, digital transformation and progress”.

With an initial investment of more than 25 million euros, which is expected to reach 100 million euros in the following phases, this first infrastructure includes 2Mw facilities in a fault-tolerant Tier IV configuration. This will allow companies and institutions to have a large capacity for the development of IT services, which, under criteria of maximum security and proximity, will be able to deploy their digital transformation processes in the most reliable and closest possible way.

The main motivation behind the start-up of ADI DATA CENTER EUSKADI is the desire of its current and future partners to provide the territory with the necessary infrastructures to enable the development of the technological-digital transition in a sustainable and close manner.

“In just a few years, we have gone from generating documents on a typewriter and storing them in filing cabinets to saving our work in the so-called ‘cloud’. Everything has changed overnight. Having everything in the cloud is a huge qualitative leap. It is a technology that will completely change the way we work with new technologies”, were the first words of Iñigo Urkullu, Lehendakari of the Basque Government, who emphasised his enthusiasm for this new project. “Today we lay the first stone of a new Data Centre in the Basque Country, based on a public-private model. This is the start of an exciting project designed with demanding requirements in terms of data security and availability, high energy efficiency and interrelated with the rest of the existing public or private Data Centres”.

The Lehendakari concluded the ceremony by extolling the importance of this first technological infrastructure in the Basque Country: “We are taking a giant step forward in one of our strategic objectives. This new centre will offer a close, solvent and economical alternative to the Basque industrial fabric, preventing data storage from becoming a barrier to the development of the digitalisation of companies”.