BSC and Tech ally to turn Barcelona into the European engine of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence has permeated all fields and sectors: from the most superfluous decisions or daily conversations to complex industrial processes. Despite its growing presence, its development continues to be concentrated in a few hands, with the great world powers (such as China or the United States) disputing technological but also geopolitical leadership. In this battle for technological sovereignty, Barcelona aspires to play a key role: developing and producing its own artificial intelligence solutions and made in Europe, with the aim of advancing towards a technologically more competitive Europe.

In this global context, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC) and Tech Barcelona have allied to democratize artificial intelligence with the BSC AI Factory installed in PIER 07. An initiative that is already working at full capacity to accelerate projects that conceive and develop technological solutions based on AI. Months ago, the two institutions began this collaboration with the objective of getting the European Commission to choose Barcelona's candidacy to install one of the thirteen factories of this type that already exist throughout Europe.

After the European Commission opted for Barcelona and after an investment of almost 200 million euros —between European, state and Generalitat funds—, this artificial intelligence factory is now a reality. In total, 1,000 square meters, distributed between two floors of Pier 07 of Tech Barcelona, and the capacity to gather a hundred workers from startups and small and medium-sized companies that develop AI solutions. In fact, this implementation in Pier 07 represents the first time that BSC researchers and professionals leave their large glass enclosure, next to the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), to settle in a neuralgic point of the city: Via Laietana, with the purpose of opening up and working more closely with companies and institutions.

A joint work with companies that for the institution is totally necessary, since although "the BSC has consolidated itself as a leading research institution, it is necessary to ensure that all this public investment in research and technology can be transformed and materialized into solutions and new companies in the market, which generate employment and promote a dynamic and leading ecosystem," defends Mariona Sanz, Head of Innovation and Business Development at BSC. It is in this purpose that the BSC AI Factory plays a fundamental role, with a dozen startups already installed in Pier 07, along with some thirty researchers and professionals from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center who will accompany and promote these technological projects.

The companies that have already been installed are still in an initial phase and work in very different sectors, from biomedicine or chemistry to culture, but share a common link: developing solutions with artificial intelligence as a base. Every semester, the BSC will open a new call to select between 10 and 15 companies and accelerate them, with the idea that the accelerated companies can be renewed to broaden their perspective and reach the maximum of the Catalan technological fabric. Thus, the objective is for this initiative to serve a total of 2,000 companies in the coming years and promote more than 500 technological projects.

"Barcelona can become a city that not only consumes and stands out for making use of AI, but is also capable of leading its development and production," remarks Sanz. Even so, for the Catalan capital to acquire this leading role and become one of the European engines, Sanz emphasizes the need to create an ecosystem that accelerates and promotes the technological solutions that different companies and researchers are currently developing in Catalonia.