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The European Commission’s executive VP for tech sovereignty, security and democracy expects more countries to join the consortium soon.
The European Union has approved seven proposals to build and operate the first AI factories in Europe, with plans to be deployed by 2026.
Selected by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC), the factories will represent €1.5bn in combined investment from national and EU funding – with the EU’s part coming from the Digital Europe Programme for AI infrastructure and Horizon Europe for alternative investment fund services. These factories intend to provide access to the massive computing power that start-ups, industry and researchers need to develop their AI models and systems, according to the European Commission.
The seven AI factories will be hosted across research and technology hubs in Spain, Italy, Finland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany and Greece with involvement from 15 EU member states along with two EuroHPC participating states.
According to the Commission, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and Sweden will deploy AI-optimised supercomputers, while the AI factory in Spain will result from an upgraded version of the existing EuroHPC system, the MareNostrum 5.
Meanwhile in Greece, the AI factory will be operated in association with the Daedalus supercomputer, a EuroHPC supercomputer already under deployment in Greece.
Moreover, the AI factories in Spain and Finland will feature an experimental platform, aimed at providing infrastructure for developing and testing AI models and applications.
Member states who are interested in joining the consortium of the newly approved factories or creating new AI factories will be able to send their proposals by 1 February 2025, the Commission said.
“Today we are one step closer to setting up AI factories. Using European supercomputers, we will enable AI start-ups to innovate and scale up. Now we are ready to lead with the right infrastructure in our ambition for the EU to become the AI continent,” said Henna Virkkunen, the EU executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy.
“We are on track to make the AI factories initiative a reality in the first 100 days of the new European Commission. We expect a second wave of offers on 1 February.”
Earlier this year, the Commission introduced measures to support EU start-ups and SMEs developing AI. These measures included setting up AI factories, which would give EU businesses access to AI-dedicated supercomputers to help them train their trustworthy AI models.
The Commission said that this would also provide a “one-stop shop” to support the AI start-up and research ecosystem in the algorithmic development, testing and validation of large-scale AI models.
Meanwhile, in 2020, the Irish Centre for High-End Computing launched Ireland’s EuroHPC Competence Centre as part of the EuroHPC joint undertaking with the aim of accelerating the preparedness of researchers seeking access to the European supercomputing network.
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