Serbia is preparing a large-scale expansion of its national digital infrastructure, with plans to increase the capacity of state-owned data centers to approximately 200 MW by 2030, with long-term ambitions of reaching around 1 GW of capacity by 2035. The expansion strategy places supercomputing infrastructure and artificial intelligence systems at the center of the country’s digital development agenda.
The plan reflects a shift in national technology policy in which data processing capacity is increasingly viewed as a strategic infrastructure comparable to energy systems or transport networks. Government officials have emphasized that the expansion of computing capacity will enable the development of artificial intelligence, large-scale data analytics and digital public services, while also supporting scientific research and industrial innovation.
At the core of this strategy is the State Data Center in Kragujevac, which has already become the backbone of Serbia’s digital infrastructure. The facility was built in 2020 as a Tier-4 class data center, one of the highest reliability standards in the industry, and serves both government institutions and commercial clients. Global technology companies such as Oracle, IBM and Huawei already use the facility to store and process data.
The data center currently operates with an installed capacity of around 14 MW, supporting more than 1,000 server racks used for cloud computing, government digital services and enterprise applications.
However, demand for computing capacity has expanded rapidly in recent years as digitalization accelerates across public administration, science and the private sector. As a result, the government has begun implementing a series of expansion projects designed to transform the Kragujevac complex into a much larger computing hub.
One of the key steps in this process is the planned construction of additional modules within the data center complex. These new modules will significantly increase electrical capacity and server space, allowing the facility to host more cloud services, government data systems and commercial users. Earlier plans envisioned the construction of Block 2, which would add tens of megawatts of capacity to the existing infrastructure.
Parallel to the expansion of physical infrastructure, Serbia is also investing heavily in supercomputing technology. The government has already installed a national supercomputer at the Kragujevac data center, based on advanced graphics processing units used for artificial intelligence workloads. The system is available to universities, research institutes, technology parks and start-ups developing AI-based applications.
Additional investments are planned to further expand this computing platform. The next phase includes the procurement of a second supercomputer and the upgrade of existing systems to deliver significantly higher processing performance. These investments are part of a broader initiative aimed at building a national AI infrastructure capable of supporting advanced research and digital services.
The strategic objective behind these investments is to position Serbia as a regional center for digital infrastructure in Southeast Europe. Large computing clusters are increasingly required for artificial intelligence training, big data analytics and complex scientific simulations. By expanding domestic computing capacity, the government aims to reduce dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure while enabling local technology companies to develop advanced digital products.
The data center expansion is also linked to the development of a broader Innovation District being constructed around the Kragujevac facility. The district is intended to host technology companies, research laboratories and innovation programs connected to the country’s digital economy. Planned facilities include research centers for bioinformatics and bioengineering, training facilities for students and a national information security center focused on cybersecurity and data protection.
Within this ecosystem, the supercomputing infrastructure will serve as the computational backbone supporting scientific research and industrial development. Artificial intelligence applications require enormous computing resources during both training and deployment phases, making large-scale data centers essential for the growth of digital industries.
The expansion of Serbia’s data center capacity also aligns with broader trends in the European digital infrastructure market. Across the continent, demand for computing capacity has surged as cloud services, AI development and digital platforms continue to grow. Many traditional data-center hubs in Western Europe now face power and grid capacity constraints, creating opportunities for emerging locations to develop new infrastructure.
Serbia’s position at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe gives it several advantages in this environment. The country sits on major fiber-optic corridors connecting European digital markets, enabling low-latency connections to cities such as Vienna, Frankfurt and Milan. In addition, electricity availability and relatively lower power costs make Serbia attractive for energy-intensive computing infrastructure.
Electricity consumption is one of the largest operating costs for data centers, often accounting for 60–70 percent of lifetime operating expenses. As a result, access to reliable and competitively priced electricity has become a key factor in determining where new data center projects are built. Serbia’s energy system still has available grid capacity in several regions, allowing the development of large electricity-intensive facilities such as hyperscale data centers.
The government’s long-term plan to increase state data center capacity to 200 MW by 2030 therefore represents a major scaling of Serbia’s digital infrastructure. If fully implemented, the target would place the country among the more significant data-center platforms in Southeast Europe. The further ambition of reaching 1 GW of capacity by 2035 suggests an even broader vision of developing Serbia as a regional digital infrastructure hub.
For the domestic technology sector, the availability of large-scale computing infrastructure could become a major catalyst for growth. Serbia’s IT industry already employs more than 100,000 engineers and specialists and generates billions of euros in software exports annually. Access to local high-performance computing systems would allow companies to develop advanced AI models, data-driven services and digital platforms without relying exclusively on foreign cloud providers.
As global demand for computing power continues to expand, the combination of supercomputing infrastructure, cloud services and data center capacity may become one of the defining features of Serbia’s economic modernization strategy. The planned expansion of state data centers signals that the country intends to position itself not only as a software development hub, but also as a key provider of digital infrastructure in the wider region.
