The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) has selected six new proposals, in addition to the previous seven, to establish AI Factories in the EU. Overall, the initiative will bring together twenty-one Member States and two associated EuroHPC Participating States.
The AI Factories’ infrastructure and services are essential for fully reaching the potential of AI in Europe. Backed by the EU’s world-class network of supercomputers, AI Factories will bring together the key ingredients for AI innovation: computing power, data, and talent. AI Factories will be a core pillar of the Commission’s strategy for Europe to become an AI Continent, enabling companies as well as researchers across the EU, in particular SMEs and startups, to enhance the training and large-scale development of general-purpose, trustworthy and ethical AI models In Europe.
The newly selected AI Factories will be hosted in Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Poland and Slovenia, representing a combined national and EU investment of around €350 million.
All AI Factories will be federated and interconnected, serving the national AI strategies as well as the pan-EU AI ecosystem. The AI Factories will give privileging access for AI startups and in some cases resulting in that SMEs will be established. After being selected in December 2024, the first seven AI Factories are expected to begin operations in April 2025.
The cut off-date for the third round of proposals to establish AI Factories is 2 May 2025. In addition, in April 2025 the EuroHPC JU will launch a call to to select AI Factory Antennas, allowing for more EuroHPC participating states to deploy national AI Factory services without having to invest in their own supercomputing infrastructure.
Furthermore, the EU is planning to deploy late 2025 across Europe several AI Gigafactories, i.e., massive high-performance computing facilities designed to develop and train next-generation AI models and applications. As announced by President Von der Leyen in Paris, both AI Factories and AI Gigafactories will be part of the Invest AI initiative part of the AI Continent Action Plan, which is due to mobilise up to €200 billion for European investments in AI.
Official Euro HPC press release:
https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/eurohpc-ju-selects-additional-ai-factories-strengthen-europes-ai-leadership-2025-03-12_en
Piast-AI Factory
The Piast-AI Factory is dedicated to advancing AI research, innovation, and application in Poland and across Europe. By bridging the gap between academia, industry, and government, the Piast-AI Factory fosters a dynamic ecosystem for knowledge exchange and AI innovation.
Led by the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC), Piast-AI Factory collaborates with the Poznan University of Technology (PUT), the Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU), and the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU), along with regional industry clusters and innovation hubs, particularly the Wielkopolska IT & Telecommunication Cluster. The investment is supported by the Ministry of Digital Affairs, Ministry of Science and Higher Education with the Ministry of Finance coordinating the process.
The Piast-AI Factory seeks to accelerate the adoption of AI technologies across academia and industry sectors, in particular for Health & Life sciences, IT & Cybersecurity (including Quantum), Space & Robotics, Sustainability (Energy, Agriculture and Climate Change) and the public sector.
Leveraging PSNC’s advanced HPC infrastructure and the EuroHPC quantum computer Piast-Q, the Piast-AI Factory promises to drive innovation, foster collaboration, and strengthen Poland’s position within the European HPC, Quantum and AI ecosystem.
The AI Factory will focus on accessibility, sustainability, and cross-border cooperation creating a platform for impactful AI applications that address pressing societal challenges while driving economic growth.
Through these efforts, the Piast-AI Factory wishes to contribute to the realisation of a technologically sovereign and globally competitive European AI ecosystem.
MORE INFORMATION
The scope of the new AI Factory, the assumed goals, hardware investments and the participation of individual institutions in creating the program will be presented in the next several weeks, following the signing of official Hosting and Administrative Agreements with EuroHPC and National Funding Agencies, namely Ministry of Digital Affairs, Ministry of Science and Higher Education and Ministry of Finance. A special press meeting will be organized for this purpose.
The Polish announcement of new members of the AI Factories program with the participation of representatives of the European Commission, EuroHPC JU, Polish Ministries and the new Polish Piast-AI Factory will take place on 18-20 March, 2025 during the EuroHPC Summit 2025 in Krakow, to which we cordially invite you.
