The binding MoU signed between DEI (Public Power Corporation) and Amazon Web Services for a mega data center in Agios Dimitrios, Western Macedonia, translates into an investment that will exceed €10 billion in its first phase and could surpass €30 billion if fully developed. This landmark agreement is expected to have a massive economic and social impact on Greece and the region, while also marking a pivotal milestone in DEI’s transformation into a leading Powertech Group.
Read more: DEI: Agreement with Amazon for Data Center in Western Macedonia
As DEI’s Chairman and CEO Giorgos Stassis announced back in April 2025, the project will be developed on the site of the former lignite yard of the decommissioned Agios Dimitrios power plant, with the first phase targeting a computing capacity of 300 MW. According to sources, the goal is to have it operational by the end of 2028.
What the DEI & Amazon agreement entails
According to powergame.gr, the agreement stipulates that Amazon will lease the data center for 15 years, while DEI will provide the land, buildings, and supporting energy infrastructure. AWS, for its part, will install and operate the IT infrastructure.
Notably, the MoU is binding — which, according to the same sources, means that following the signing of the agreement, any remaining matters are largely procedural in nature. The partnership with a hyperscaler was a prerequisite for moving the project from planning to execution, as it represents a central pillar of Western Macedonia’s new era.
Sources familiar with the agreement note that, on the financial side, DEI will cover approximately €1 billion — an amount relating to the buildings that will house the data center, as well as the necessary electrical and mechanical equipment and supporting infrastructure. This follows the Infrastructure-as-a-Service model.
Amazon’s investment
In the first phase, Amazon will invest approximately €1 billion in IT equipment (such as servers and storage systems). Additionally, the total expenditure for the procurement of processing units is estimated at around €10 billion. This means the total capital outlay for the first phase exceeds €10 billion. The operation of the infrastructure is expected to contribute approximately €170 million annually to the energy group’s EBITDA from 2030 onwards.
A key source of stable revenue for DEI
A significant element of the deal is that it will serve as a source of stable recurring revenue for DEI — both through the lease of the facilities to Amazon and through the supply of energy via long-term contracts. The financial figures become even more impressive in the second phase. As explicitly stated in the stock exchange announcement, DEI and Amazon intend to explore expanding the data center from the initial 300 MW up to 1 GW, subject to mutual agreement, market conditions, and the signing of the necessary additional contracts.
The expansion option
In practice, according to sources, the commercial agreement includes an option for expansion, with the decision on whether to “activate” it expected within the coming months. All indications point toward a positive outcome, to the extent that it would be considered a surprise if the partnership between the two companies did not lead to an upgrade of the infrastructure to 1 GW. The expansion would be gradual, with computing capacity increasing incrementally — roughly 300 MW per year — so that the campus reaches full development of approximately 1 GW around 2031. At this scale, the financial figures change dramatically. DEI is estimated to invest a total of around €3 billion, while Amazon’s contribution would approach €30 billion. In other words, a fully developed Giga Data Center in Agios Dimitrios would represent capital in excess of €30 billion.
The scale of the capital expenditure
It should be noted that DEI’s new Strategic Plan — which includes €24.2 billion in investments — covers only the mega data center, not the potential upgrade to 1,000 MW capacity. According to the group, however, once the final investment decision is made, the Giga Data Center will be ready within three years.
The scale of the capital expenditure across both phases becomes clearer when compared to other landmark investments in Greece. The total investment plan announced for Ellinikon, for instance, stands at €8 billion.
Even the first phase of the data center alone — once AWS’s technology equipment is factored in — places it among the largest individual investment projects in Greece. Should it expand to 1 GW, the comparison moves well beyond the Greek context and into the realm of international-scale projects.
The significance for the Greek economy
Tellingly, the €30 billion that AWS could potentially invest corresponds to 12.1% of Greece’s 2025 GDP, which according to ELSTAT’s preliminary estimate came in at €248.4 billion. Even more significant for the Greek economy is the fact that, given the structure of the partnership, the vast majority of this capital will originate from the American tech giant.
This therefore represents a potentially enormous inflow of foreign direct investment, tied to one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy.
The project’s significance for the European market
The scale of the project also carries considerable weight for the European market. Even at 300 MW, DEI itself has described the project as one of the largest data centers in Europe. At 1 GW, however, Kozani enters an entirely different category — one reserved for large-scale hyperscale campuses of international standing, not typical regional data centers.
An interesting point of comparison is Aragon, Spain. In 2024, AWS announced investments of €15.7 billion to expand its cloud region in the area, and in March 2026, Amazon increased its total investment plan for data center infrastructure in Spain to €33.7 billion. While not entirely comparable projects — the Spanish program covers a broader infrastructure rollout — the comparison is nonetheless telling: a fully developed DEI-Amazon project in Western Macedonia would operate on the same order of magnitude in terms of capital.
Why DEI chose Amazon as its partner
The scale of the agreement also speaks to the “calibre” of DEI’s partner. Amazon closed 2025 with sales of $128.7 billion — up 20% year-on-year — and operating profits of $45.6 billion. Its global cloud network now spans 39 geographic regions and 124 availability zones. Amazon’s decision to choose DEI for a 15-year partnership on a hundreds-of-megawatt infrastructure project also serves as a vote of confidence — both in the Greek company itself and in Greece’s capacity to host world-class digital infrastructure.
Greece’s broader ambitions
The significance of this deal extends well beyond Kozani. Greece has been working for several years to position itself as a data transmission and storage hub connecting Europe, the southeastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia — leveraging its geographic location, new international fiber optic connections, and the development of domestic data centers. Enterprise Greece was already describing the country as an “emerging data hub” for southeastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean back in March 2026.
The opportunity this creates
The installation of a 300 MW facility — and even more so a 1 GW campus — qualitatively transforms that picture. A data center of this scale does not merely serve local data storage needs. It will function as a regional cloud and AI computing platform, providing computational resources to businesses and organizations well beyond Greece’s borders. Combined with the country’s international telecommunications connections, this creates the opportunity for a significant share of cloud and AI demand from the Balkans and the broader eastern Mediterranean to be served from Greek infrastructure.
More than just a business deal
This explains why the Amazon partnership carries strategic importance well beyond a straightforward commercial transaction. DEI becomes in practice a partner to a global hyperscaler, and simultaneously one of the vehicles through which Greece is staking its claim to a much higher position in the European digital value chain. If the project reaches 1 GW, it will represent one of the largest concentrations of computing and energy power for a data center campus in the wider region.
What this means for Western Macedonia
The deal takes on even greater significance for Western Macedonia specifically. The exit from lignite has stripped the region of an activity that was a cornerstone of its economic identity for decades. DEI’s plan seeks to leverage precisely the “legacy” of that era to create a different kind of productive core. Where lignite was once stored to generate electricity, one of Europe’s largest computing power infrastructures will now be developed.
The region’s competitive advantages
The region offers a combination of advantages that are rarely found in one place: large, immediately available industrial land, a robust high- and extra-high-voltage electricity grid, access to a natural gas network, fiber optic connectivity, existing water infrastructure, and — crucially — a workforce with years of hands-on technical experience operating complex energy facilities. As far back as the plan’s presentation in 2025, DEI’s management had highlighted that this unique combination was the primary reason Agios Dimitrios could host a project of this scale.
The prospect of a broader technology ecosystem
Another significant factor is the potential for a broader ecosystem of technology companies, suppliers, technical support firms, and service providers to develop around the data center. In this sense, the region could attract new businesses linked to the next chapter of the digital revolution.
A critical advantage is that DEI can simultaneously address the greatest challenge for any AI data center: access to large quantities of electricity with high reliability. An entire energy ecosystem is being developed in the area, encompassing large-scale solar farms, battery storage systems, and two pumped-storage hydro projects with capacities of 320 MW and 240 MW respectively. DEI’s original plan for Western Macedonia alone envisaged 2,130 MW of solar capacity and up to 860 MW of energy storage.
The role of Ptolemaida 5
The Ptolemaida 5 power plant will also play an important role. Based on DEI’s most recent plans, the unit will initially be converted into an open-cycle natural gas plant of approximately 350 MW, scheduled to come online by end of 2027. In a second stage, by 2029, it will be converted into a combined-cycle unit of approximately 440 MW, to meet the energy demands of the mega data center.
What the original plan envisioned
DEI’s original plan also included, for the full development of the Giga Data Center, an additional investment program of approximately €1.2 billion in energy units at the Ptolemaida 5 and Agios Dimitrios sites. The rationale is to create a local energy ecosystem capable of sustaining the high and relatively stable consumption of the data center — combining renewable energy, storage, and dispatchable generation.
The energy model has been designed for direct supply, meaning there will be no additional burden on the wider electricity system — thereby avoiding the risk that the enormous new demand automatically translates into upward price pressure on the wholesale market. The agreement also explicitly includes long-term green Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) between Amazon and DEI.
The water question
Equally important is the issue of water, which is emerging globally as one of the most sensitive factors in data center permitting. Western Macedonia already has infrastructure that was built to serve its lignite plants, while the new activity requires only a fraction of the historical water volumes — specifically, just 0.6% of the quantities previously required by the old lignite operations.
Employment represents the second major challenge and opportunity. For the 300 MW data center alone, DEI’s initial estimate was that at least 4,000 jobs would be created during construction. As the scale of the project grows, so too will its impact on employment.
Thousands of jobs
For the full rollout of DEI’s investment program in Western Macedonia — meaning the Giga Data Center together with the new energy facilities it will require — the company has estimated up to 20,000 jobs during the construction phase and up to 2,000 permanent positions during operations. The impact does not stop at direct employment: data centers of this scale generate demand across construction, maintenance, telecommunications, logistics, security, IT services, and technical supply chains.
A hyperscale AI campus acts as a “magnet” for a much broader circle of investment, as the concentration of significant computing power gives companies additional reasons to locate in the area — particularly those seeking low latency or direct access to cloud and AI services.
DEI’s transformation into a Powertech Group
The data center is simultaneously a milestone for DEI itself, which is targeting a transformation into a Powertech Group — combining its traditional energy activities with telecommunications infrastructure, data centers, and artificial intelligence. In pursuit of this vision, it has already developed FiberGrid for fiber optic networks, and has entered the data center space through Data In Scale, its partnership with EDGNEX-DAMAC in Attica.
The Amazon agreement adds a link that had until now been missing: collaboration with a leading global hyperscaler at a scale of hundreds of megawatts. What’s more, the MoU goes beyond the 15-year data center lease and the PPAs. DEI and Amazon state that they will also explore multi-year cooperation in cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, with the aim of supporting the energy group’s digital transformation.
At the same time, DEI has already established Olympus AI, a subsidiary focused on the design and development of artificial intelligence technologies. In the group’s description of its activities, Olympus AI is explicitly included among the initiatives targeting the provision of Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service. The data center is therefore also intended as a base for developing an application ecosystem.
As CEO Stassis has indicated, the group’s plans under development include the potential to build specialized AI applications for sectors such as shipping or legal services — to be hosted on the data center’s computing infrastructure and offered as services by companies partnering with DEI.
