ALPS has appointed Brian Turnbow as Technical Director for AI, placing a veteran of Italian telecommunications and digital infrastructure at the center of its plan to develop artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers around available electricity and existing industrial assets.
The Italian company is pursuing an “energy-to-compute” model that would locate power-hungry computing facilities where grid capacity, generation resources, or usable industrial connections already exist. The approach addresses one of the most immediate constraints facing AI infrastructure: developers can procure servers quickly, but securing enough electricity and a grid connection can take far longer.
Italy illustrates the scale of the bottleneck. Terna data published as of August 31, 2026 showed requests for data center grid connections exceeding 100 gigawatts, compared with roughly 30 gigawatts at the end of 2024. Those requests do not equate to built facilities or guaranteed demand, but the jump places increasing pressure on connection queues, transmission planning, and land suitable for large projects.
ALPS said Turnbow will lead its AI and HPC technical strategy, covering data center architecture, site evaluation, and collaboration with technology and industrial partners. Italy is identified as a priority market, where the company plans to work with domestic engineering and industrial groups while drawing on its experience from projects outside the country.
Energy access shapes the data center map
AI data centers require dense clusters of graphics processing units and other specialized hardware, which can consume far more electricity per facility than conventional enterprise server sites. Their development is increasingly governed by practical questions around substations, transmission capacity, local generation, cooling infrastructure, and the timing of grid upgrades.
Gartner forecasts that global data center electricity demand will reach 565 terawatt-hours in 2026, up 26% from 447 terawatt-hours in 2025. The figures capture demand across data center facilities rather than AI workloads alone, yet the rapid growth in AI computing has become a central factor in planning new capacity.
ALPS’ strategy is to avoid concentrating exclusively in established data center hubs, where power connections can be constrained, and instead assess locations where energy is already accessible. The company said it will examine opportunities to integrate renewable generation and redevelop inactive industrial sites, retaining existing buildings, grid connections, and other equipment where technical conditions permit.
Reusing industrial infrastructure could shorten the work required before a site can host computing hardware, though each location would still need engineering assessments, permits, equipment upgrades, and connection agreements. The model also seeks to limit new land use and construction by adapting assets that may already be linked to energy networks.
That positioning gives Turnbow’s role a practical focus beyond server selection. Site suitability for AI or HPC depends on whether a facility can receive reliable power at the required scale, remove the heat generated by high-density equipment, and connect to fiber networks capable of carrying large volumes of data.
Turnbow brings Italian infrastructure experience
Turnbow has more than 25 years of experience in telecommunications and digital infrastructure. He has held technical roles at TWT, Unidata, and CDLAN, three companies associated with Italy’s connectivity and network infrastructure sector. He also sits on the board of ITNOG, the Italian Network Operators Group.
His appointment gives ALPS a technical lead with experience in the networking layer that data centers depend on alongside power supply. AI facilities require not only high-capacity electricity but also resilient connectivity between computing clusters, enterprise customers, cloud platforms, and other data centers.
ALPS was founded in Trentino in 2018 and says it operates across four continents. The company designs, builds, and operates data centers for energy- and compute-intensive applications, combining energy development with data center engineering and operations.
The company’s expansion has been supported by Azimut, according to ALPS. It cited a €40 million transaction in 2023 and a €105 million club deal in 2024 as financing for its international growth plans.
Mining remains part of the business plan
ALPS said its cryptocurrency mining operations will continue under its existing business plan even as the company develops AI and HPC capacity. That creates a potentially useful operational overlap: both mining and AI computing require dependable electricity, cooling, hardware deployment, and data center management.
The economics and hardware requirements of the two activities differ sharply. Cryptocurrency mining is generally built around application-specific machines designed for a narrow computational task, while AI and HPC facilities rely on flexible accelerators, networking equipment, storage systems, and software stacks that support training and inference workloads. A site optimized for mining would therefore require substantial technical planning before it could accommodate high-density AI equipment.
Global Bitcoin mining uses roughly 155 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, according to estimates cited in the supplied material. That is well below Gartner’s 2026 forecast for total data center demand, but both sectors compete for access to power, electrical equipment, cooling capacity, and suitable sites.
For ALPS, the opportunity lies less in simply adding servers than in identifying industrial locations where power and infrastructure can support computing sooner than a greenfield facility awaiting a new grid connection. Turnbow’s mandate suggests the company is trying to turn that site-selection process into a repeatable technical strategy, beginning with Italy’s increasingly crowded power connection landscape.
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