]As part of the EU AI Start-Up Initiative, the European Commission and the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) have opened access to the EU’s supercomputing resources to start-ups, SMEs, and the AI community.

The EU’s supercomputers, LEONARDO, LUMI, and MareNostrum5 are world-class, and will be crucial in developing foundational AI models along with consortium exascale supercomputers JUPITER and JULES VERNE.

The move marks the EU’s objective of levelling up the competitiveness of the European AI market and accelerating the development of AI in the EU, positioning Europe as a leader in the global AI ecosystem. The announcement was made in the fourth AI Alliance Assembly in Madrid, following President Ursula von der Leyen’s 2023 State of the Union address.

She stated: “Europe is a leader in supercomputing, thanks to the investments we made in recent years. We have three state-of-the-art supercomputers in the EU. And we need to put this power to use. The access to Europe’s supercomputing infrastructure that we are announcing today will help start-ups lead the development and scale-up of artificial intelligence in a responsible manner, and in line with European values.”

In her address, Von der Leyen added that the 2024 Commission Work Programme will propose regulatory changes to ensure secure and sustainable access to European supercomputers.

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market, commented: “Supercomputing is an essential brick of Europe’s technological sovereignty. Our European leadership in high-performance computing – built through decades of vision, experience and investment – will now translate in scientific, technological and business competitiveness. With today’s Large AI Grand Challenge, we open up our world-leading supercomputers to train and finetune the most advanced foundation AI models. This will help start-ups bring down the training time for their latest AI models from several months to days or weeks – massively boosting our competitiveness in the world of AI.”

Alongside supercomputer access, the European Commission has also launched the Large AI Grand Challenge, a competition that will bolster AI with participation from European fintechs. The EuroHPC JU also announced that they will enhance activities and services powered by supercomputing to foster durable and safe AI development in the EU and promote innovation.