The EU selects the first seven AI Factories of the EuroHPC network

2024-12-10 · Publisher : EuroHPC JU · Domain : Cloud & DevOps

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking selects seven sites for the first European "AI Factories": Spain, Italy, Finland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany and Greece, for 1.5 billion euros of public investment.

### Background On 10 December 2024, the **EuroHPC** Joint Undertaking announces the selection of seven consortia to set up the Union's first **AI Factories**. These sites will give start-ups, industry and researchers access to supercomputers optimized for AI, alongside existing supercomputers. ### Key facts - Seven sites selected: BSC (Spain), IT4LIA in Bologna (Italy), LUMI (Finland), Meluxina-AI (Luxembourg), MIMER in Linköping (Sweden), HammerHAI in Stuttgart (Germany), Pharos (Greece). - Total commitment of 1.5 billion euros, half funded by the EU through the Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe. - Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Sweden deploy AI-optimized supercomputers; Spain relies on an upgraded version of MareNostrum 5. - Seventeen countries take part in the initiative; deployment is planned for the following year. - A second wave of sites was announced in 2025. - The Commission describes the initiative as a milestone towards building an ecosystem to train advanced AI models in Europe. ### Why it matters This is the first public building block of European AI computing infrastructure, ahead of the larger "gigafactory" projects. For companies, it is an alternative way to access compute besides US clouds, with access conditions specific to each site. It also raises the question of interoperability between these public platforms and the commercial cloud. ### Takeaway The EuroHPC AI Factories lay in 2024 the public foundation on which the EU will build its gigafactories.

Tags : Europe, IA, Datacenter, Souveraineté, Puces