Deloitte inaugurates hub dedicated to generative artificial intelligence

It is called Solaria and it is a space entirely dedicated to generative artificial intelligence, a very important field in which, globally, Deloitte plans to invest over 3 billion dollars by 2030. In Italy, this investment takes the form of an ad hoc division (the GenAi Centre of Excellence) set up about a year ago and now employing 250 people, led by Lorenzo Cerulli, partner and GenAi leader at Deloitte, and two dedicated hubs: the Solaria space in Rome, inaugurated a month ago and dedicated mainly to the governance sector, and the one in Milan, focused mainly on the corporate world, which was officially inaugurated on 29 May in the presence of the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, the vice-president of the European Commission Raffaele Fitto, the vice-president of the Senate Licia Ronzulli, and the ceo of Deloitte Central Mediterranean (Italy, Greece and Malta), Fabio Pompei.

'These are two spaces that we will use to let our customers experience first-hand all the applications of GenAI in various sectors, through a vertical approach,' explained CEO Pompei during the inauguration. 'Today we are opening this space, but we have been working on these solutions for a long time. AI and GenAI are disruptive technologies, destined to profoundly change the economy and society as a whole: European companies must also seize the opportunities of this great transformation'.

According to Deloitte research presented yesterday and entitled 'Generative Tomorrow. The Future Unveiled, starring GenAI', the adoption of GenAI by large companies in Italy could lead to an estimated 5% to 15% increase in margins in the medium to long term, with an increase in the value of Italian companies of between EUR 149 and 446 billion. The impact was calculated on companies with a turnover of more than EUR 50 million and at least 250 employees.

According to the study, the industries with the highest potential value increase are finance and energy, calculated at between EUR 33 billion and EUR 99 billion and between EUR 22 billion and EUR 67 billion respectively. Not surprisingly, 78 per cent of the companies surveyed by Deloitte plan to increase their investments in GenAI in 2025, 74 per cent of those who have already done so say they have achieved a return equal to or greater than expected, and two out of three companies record an ROI of over 30 per cent.

But while the competitive advantage brought by AI is increasingly clear, in Italy only 8.2 per cent (13.5 per cent in the EU27) of companies with at least 10 employees are already using artificial intelligence technologies. Moreover, globally only 17% of corporate boards regularly discuss AI and 66% of board members claim to have limited AI expertise.