Barcelona will be key in the development of Artificial Intelligence at a European level. The EC has chosen the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) to lead one of the seven centers for boosting artificial intelligence in the European Union. The objective: to put AI at the service of the European innovation ecosystem to facilitate that companies and researchers can benefit from this technology.
Thus, the objective of the initiative is to democratize access to artificial intelligence and bring it closer to SMEs, startups, and researchers. Through the project, the BSC aims to reach some 2,000 companies in key sectors such as biomedicine, pharmacogenetics, climatology, or chip design, with the forecast of developing some 500 projects with the help of AI.
Through this project, the BSC will become a European AI Factory, with funding of more than 200 million euros. Of these, 98.3 million will come from European institutions; 61.7 million will be from the central government, and 14 million will be contributed by the Generalitat. In addition, Portugal, Turkey, and Romania participate in the BSC project. With the aim of boosting AI with a focus on all of Europe, research centers from the three countries will make contributions until reaching 98.8 million more.
The investment in the BSC will include the launch of services to foster the innovative ecosystem around AI, and the update of the Marenostrum 5 supercomputer with state-of-the-art technology, hardware and software for AI development, and an extensive data repository.
Barcelona's AI Factory will be "a key pole for boosting the AI innovation ecosystem in Europe", as highlighted by the director of the BSC, Mateo Valero, who has called the decision historic. According to him, the center will be decisive for the adoption of these new technologies by the business fabric, especially startups and SMEs, and public administration.
The choice of the BSC by European institutions to promote this project represents "a turning point", defended the Minister of Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat, at the BSC. "We are facing a great unprecedented opportunity and a window of opportunity," Montserrat remarked, highlighting that the project seeks to lead the AI era in a sustainable, ethical, and inclusive way.
The factories will begin to be deployed in 2025, and the forecast is that the BSC's will be operational by the end of the yearAnd it is that"the AI Factory will be accessible to the business fabric, and SMEs will be able to come here with their projects", as highlighted also from the BSC by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Universities, Juan Cruz: "We are democratizing artificial intelligence and making it accessible to everyone."
In addition to the BSC, the impulse of AI in Europe will also be led by centers located in Athens, Bologna, Stuttgart, the Finnish Kajaani, the Swedish Linköping, and the Luxembourgish Bissen. These centers have also been selected by the EC with the aim of facilitating access to advanced supercomputing infrastructure, so that companies, industry, and researchers can access its great potential.
The factories will begin to be deployed in 2025, and the forecast is that the BSC's will be operational by the end of the year. In addition, the BSC and the Finnish center will also have an experimental platform to develop and test innovative AI models and applications and to foster collaboration with the rest of Europe.
The project led by the BSC is represented by the center itself, along with Portuguese, Turkish, and Romanian technological institutions. The initiative will focus on areas such as services for public administration, health, pharmacy and biotechnology, as well as communication, finance, agriculture, climate, energy, as detailed by the Head of Innovation and Business Development at BSC, Mariona Sanz.
The initiative "positions Spain as one of the reference countries in the development of artificial intelligence and will promote both the public and private sectors to develop R&D projects with a significant impact on science and technology," according to the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant. The Minister for Digital Transformation, Óscar López, has emphasized the commitment to being at the forefront of AI, generating an ecosystem of startups and innovative companies, in which the BSC and Barcelona will play a decisive role.