Vertiv Partners with Nvidia & iGenius for Chip Deployment
Vertiv is partnering with global chipmaker Nvidia and AI pioneer iGenius to deploy Colosseum, one of the world’s largest Nvidia DGX AI supercomputers.
Harnessing Nvidia Grace Blackwell superchips, Colosseum is set to deploy in Italy in 2025 and hopes to redefine the digital landscape through a first-of-its-kind sovereign AI data centre for regulated workloads.
The supercomputer is expected to embody a fusion of computational power, energy efficiency and data sovereignty – all while balancing necessary data security requirements.
“Harnessing the power of NVIDIA's cutting-edge accelerated computing and Vertiv's innovative infrastructure expertise, Colosseum stands as a testament to the transformative potential of sovereign AI,” says Uljan Sharka, CEO of iGenius.
“We’re demonstrating how modular systems and software-specific infrastructure enable a new era of mission-critical AI.”
What is Colosseum?
Colosseum, a NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, is the latest advancement in a long-standing collaboration between Vertiv and NVIDIA. It has been strategically positioned in southern Italy to address regional government requirements, marking a significant milestone in the European AI landscape.
The supercomputer is also designed to address continued demand of highly regulated industries such as finance and healthcare.
With this in mind, Colosseum will be modular by design and engineered specifically to be efficient. The deployment will leverage Vertiv’s 360AI reference architecture infrastructure platform for data centre power and cooling that is designed for the Nvidia GB200 NVL72, which was co-developed with Nvidia and released in late 2024.
Colosseum will combine this expertise with Nvidia accelerated computing and the Nvidia Omniverse Blueprint for AI factor design and operations.
Designing the system in this way should enable iGenius to deploy one of the fastest hyperscale AI supercomputers, making it one of the largest to support sovereign AI.
“The unit of compute is no longer the chip — it’s the system, the AI Factory,” says Karsten Winther, President of Vertiv, EMEA.
“Through our collaboration with NVIDIA and visionary AI player iGenius, we are proving the efficiency and system-level maturity of delivering the data centre as a unit of compute, unlocking rapid adoption of AI-native power and cooling infrastructure as a catalyst for AI at scale.”
Accelerating deployment
Vertiv has also extended its reference design library on its AI Hub with the co-developed data centre power and cooling design for NVIDIA GB300 NVL72.
Eager to stay ahead, Vertiv hopes this will support customers in planning their infrastructure ahead of time, with designs that anticipate increased rack power densities for AI factories at scale.
Colosseum was co-designed as a physically accurate digital twin with Nvidia Omniverse technologies to enable real-time collaboration between the three companies. They also hope to accelerate system-level decisions and enable engineers to test and refine designs instantly to reduce simulation time.
- Reduce deployment time by up to 50% compared to traditional data centre builds
- 3D design enables predictive modelling of thermal load, electrical flow and site layout for 132kW liquid-cooled racks
“AI is reshaping the data centre landscape, demanding new levels of scale, efficiency and adaptability for global AI factories,” comments Charlie Boyle, Vice President of DGX platforms at NVIDIA.
“With physically-based digital twins enabled by NVIDIA Omniverse technologies and Vertiv’s modular design for the iGenius DGX SuperPOD data centre, Colosseum sets a new standard for building supercomputers for the era of AI.”
Building a blueprint for AI factories
Vertiv’s AI-ready prefabricated modular data centre solution includes power, cooling, management, monitoring, service and maintenance offerings. This is alongside power and cooling capacity that supports up to 132kW per rack initially, but has the potential to go further.
“The future of sovereign AI is no longer theoretical — it’s being built now.”
This approach offers exceptional scalability and energy efficiency, Vertiv says, white also transforming the way data centres are built and deployed.
Not only is this an efficient way to build a data centre, but the prefabricated approach means it can be replicated and speed up time-to-market.
Colosseum will leverage Nvidia Mission Control for data centre operations and orchestration and Vertiv Unify to simplify and synchronise building management for AI factories.
- Real-time orchestration across power, cooling and compute
- Digital twin synchronisation for closed-loop optimisation
- AI-ready capabilities that support autonomous decision-making
“Colosseum is more than a data centre. It’s the template for scalable, repeatable, sovereign AI factories,” Vertiv says in its press release. “By combining cloud-scale density, local data control and modular deployment, it signals the next phase of AI: where inference must be secure, fast, compliant and distributed.
“This is not a one-off project — it’s a reference point. iGenius is building a blueprint with Colosseum designed to be repeated globally, with Vertiv and NVIDIA aligned on future platform support, including DGX GB300 systems and beyond.
“The future of sovereign AI is no longer theoretical — it’s being built now.”
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