ASG and INFN Launch SURE, a 5.8 Million Euro MgB₂ Cable Project for Data Centres
ASG Superconductors and Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) have started SURE, a five-year project to build a superconducting power cable for data centres. The 5.8 million euro programme will produce a 50 metre magnesium diboride (MgB₂) cable rated at 1,500 A and 400 V, installed at the INFN Frascati National Laboratories data centre. It puts a non-REBCO chemistry into a market most superconductor developers are approaching with REBCO tape.
Italy is funding a five-year cable programme worth 5.8 million euros
On 21 July 2026, ASG Superconductors and INFN announced SURE, short for SUperconducting-REliability & Efficiency. Italy’s Ministry of University and Research is paying for it through the Italian Fund for Applied Sciences, with a total budget of 5.8 million euros and completion expected in 2031.
The work splits three ways. ASG, a Genoa manufacturer of superconducting magnets and MgB₂ wire with around 200 employees, designs, produces and installs the cable. The INFN-LASA laboratory in Milan leads the project and measures the conductor’s properties. The Frascati National Laboratories integrate the line and supervise its operation to gather reliability data.
The prototype is 50 metres of MgB₂ rated at 0.6 MW
The deliverable is a 50 metre cable of magnesium diboride. Its superconducting section is rated at 1,500 A and 400 V, giving 0.6 MW, and it runs at about 20 K (−253 °C, −424 °F). That is a low-voltage, high-current design, which addresses distribution inside a data hall rather than transmission outside it.
The cable will not sit on a test bench. It goes into the new data centre at INFN’s Frascati National Laboratories, a working high-performance computing site, which makes SURE a pilot installation rather than a laboratory experiment.
MgB₂ sits outside the REBCO mainstream and needs colder cooling
Most of the industry now builds power cables from rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) tape. Magnesium diboride is a different chemistry, a simple compound of two abundant elements that superconducts at 39 K (−234 °C, −389 °F), well below REBCO’s critical temperature. SURE’s cable will therefore run near 20 K on cryocoolers or cold helium gas, rather than at the 77 K (−196 °C, −321 °F) of liquid nitrogen that REBCO systems can often use.
The compensation is on the wire side. MgB₂ is made by the powder-in-tube method and carries no silver, so the conductor is cheap next to coated tape. Our materials guide sets out how the chemistries compare.
The ten-times figures are partner claims, not measurements
Marco Nassi, chief executive of ASG Superconductors, says the technology can transport “up to ten times more energy, with the same dimensions” as traditional cable technologies. The release also states that cooling costs fall by more than ten times against helium-cooled systems, a comparison with older low-temperature superconductors rather than with copper. Neither figure has been independently verified, and producing operating numbers that have been is the point of a five-year pilot.
SURE follows IRIS, an earlier programme worth over 12 million euros under which ASG is building a 130 metre MgB₂ demonstrator for testing at Salerno. Data centre power is now pulling in several superconductor developers at once: VEIR moved 3 MW through a single cable in November 2025, and LS Cable and KEPCO agreed to build a superconducting grid for a Korean data centre. SURE is the MgB₂ entry among them, and it has until 2031 to report.