On Thursday 23 May, the Council of the EU reached a political agreement on an amendment to the Regulation aimed at broadening the objectives of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (known as ‘EuroHPC’), which aims to strengthen Europe’s position as an emerging player in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
This amendment, proposed by the European Commission, broadens the scope of the regulation setting out the objectives of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, which was created in 2018 to pave the way for European supercomputers.
The EU Council’s agreement adds a guarantee that the activities covered by ‘AI factories’ will offer equitable access to supercomputers, making them accessible to a greater number of users, both public and private.
Following this political agreement, hosts of supercomputer will be able to receive a financial contribution from the EU that covers up to 50% of the acquisition costs of the AI supercomputers and up to 50% of their operating costs.
Finally, the text sets out in detail that the supercomputers should primarily be used to develop, test, evaluate and validate large-scale AI training models, which will further develop AI in the European Union. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)