The Liebniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), in Munich, Germany, is set for a €500 million ($575.85m) expansion.

The funding, provided by Free State Bavaria, will see the data center expanded, as well as the upgrading of power and cooling infrastructure.

Construction began in October 2025, with a groundbreaking ceremony held for a new substation for LRZ in Garching towards the beginning of the month. The substation is set to begin operations in 2028 and will supply 50MVA each to two transformers for the supercomputing center.

Renovations of the computer building/data center have already begun in preparation for the upcoming Blue Lion supercomputer, expected to be operational in 2027.

Once completed, the building itself will be expanded to the north, with the extension to provide five floors of space for the power and cooling infrastructure needed for subsequent supercomputers and AI clusters.

DCD previously reported that an expansion for power and cooling infrastructure at LRZ, as well as a new dedicated substation, will take the LRZ site to 40MW from 2028.

“This is a tremendous boost for science and research in Bavaria, and thus for the state’s innovative strength,” said Prof. Helmut Reiser, LRZ deputy director. “We are delighted that, with this significant support, we can expand the LRZ and position it resiliently for the future.”

He added: “Science is relying on increasingly powerful supercomputers and AI computers for simulations of natural phenomena, modeling of climate data, and artificial intelligence methods. Our power demand will increase significantly in the coming years – even the extremely energy-efficient operation of our data center will not change this. The substation creates the necessary prerequisites for the operation of future IT infrastructures.”

Deiser said that the data center currently operates with a PUE value of just under 1.05 for its AI and supercomputing systems through water cooling. It also sends all waste heat to the LRZ office buildings, with plans to expand this to the research campus, which will be enabled through the infrastructure upgrades.

The LRZ, part of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BADW), is the IT service provider for universities and scientific institutions around Munich and the state of Bavaria. Founded in 1962, the current data center opened in 2006; it currently offers up to 10MW across 10,000 sqm (107,640 sq ft), with an additional 5MW coming in 2026.

The Blue Lion supercomputer will be developed by HPE, and will feature Nvidia Blackwell GPUs. It is expected to have 30x the performance of SuperMUC-NG, the current LRZ HPC system machine. LRZ is also home to an IQM quantum computer.