In Pisa, the EPI team participated at the RoundTable at ApplePies, 7th International Workshop Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment & Society. The Round Table confirmed that the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, in full alignment with the objective of deploying in Europe a world-class supercomputing infrastructure and a competitive innovation ecosystem in supercomputing technologies, applications and skills by coordinating the efforts of its member states and share resources, has assigned one of the 3 Precursor to Exascale system to CINECA. Building on that, the Round Table’s participants presented the contribution of Italian-based institutions and enterprises towards the maximization of the results achieved through exascale-class systems both from the scientific and research point of view as well as from the industrial point of view. The current status of R&D in Italy specifically for the development of components for exascale-class systems was addressed, including the role of Italian institutions and enterprises in the European Processor Initiative (EPI) consortium, and which synergies among the key players could create a native Italian ecosystem fully aligned within the EuroHPC JU and EPI initiatives for enabling exascale-class systems to support scientific leadership and industrial competitiveness.