The European Union (EU) has announced plans to become a leader in artificial intelligence through the development of "AI factories" around the bloc around its "world-class" network of European High-Performance Computing (HPC) supercomputers. The EU will make these so-called factories accessible to users such as startups, industry, and researchers.
Commenting on the news, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the Commission, said:
"Europe is already leading the way with the EU AI Act, ensuring AI is safer and more trustworthy. Earlier this year, we fulfilled our promise by opening our high-performance computers to European AI start-ups. Now, Europe must also become a global leader in AI innovation. AI factories will help secure our position at the forefront of this transformative technology."
Via these AI factories, developers will be able to train their models using the EuroHPC supercomputers. This help could give startups a chance to get a look-in without having to raise massive sums of money from private investors for the expansive compute infrastructure needed to train gen AI large language models (LLMs).
Industries that the EU expects to benefit from AI factories are wide-ranging. They include key sectors such as healthcare, energy, automotive and transport, defense and aerospace, robotics and manufacturing, and clean and agri tech.
The Commission announced that a rolling call will be launched today to the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and will be continuously open until the end of 2025 with the first deadline on November 4, 2024. There will be cutoff dates every three months, as long as funds are available. The European Union will contribute €1 billion from the Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe with an equal amount of funding coming from EU Member States.
In the AI race, one of the biggest AI players is France's Mistral. Other than that, there aren't too many well-known names. When we think of AI, names like Meta's Llama, Google's Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Anthropic's Claude jump to mind, but these are all American. China is also developing some good gen AI tech, getting further ahead of the EU as well.
Source: European Commission
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