Six new European sites have been designated to host AI factories, the European Commission announced on Wednesday 12 March. The new plants are due to be rolled out next year in Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Poland and Slovenia.
These six new AI factories will join the seven already selected (see EUROPE 13542/13) across an interconnected network of AI hubs.
Through the joint European High-Performance Computing (EuroHPC) initiative, these facilities will be supported by a combined national and European investment of around €485 million. Factories must offer privileged access to start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the field of AI in order to encourage development and research in the sector.
Setting up these factories is one of the EU’s stated objectives in order to get back into the artificial intelligence race (see EUROPE 13511/19). The Commissioner for Technological Sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, had said that she wanted to make Europe “the continent of AI” under the current Commission.
At the AI Action Summit in Paris in February, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the Invest AI initiative, with a budget of €20 billion of European investment, for the deployment of several AI ‘gigafactories’ (see EUROPE 13577/14). (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)