The Government will invest nearly 62 million euros in the first Artificial Intelligence factory in Spain

The Government of Spain, through the Ministries for Digital Transformation and Public Function and Science, Innovation and Universities, will invest 61.76 million euros in the first Artificial Intelligence factory in our country. It is one of the first seven European AI factories that the European Commission has announced will be launched across the continent.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) will house this factory which, together with the other six to be built in Europe, will democratise access to Europe's advanced supercomputing infrastructure, so that companies, SMEs and start-ups can also take advantage of its resources, and not just the research community as is currently the case.

In addition to the backing of the Spanish government, the project will also receive support from the Generalitat de Catalunya, which will contribute 14 million euros, and from countries such as Portugal, Turkey and Romania, which will make contributions totalling 98.86 million euros. In addition to this is the 98.33 million euros from the EUROHPC JU, the institution channelling the IA Factories initiative.

"The government is making a firm commitment to ensure that Spain is at the forefront of AI innovation, generating a powerful ecosystem of startups and companies around these new technologies. The development of AI requires high computational power, which is currently only offered by large platforms, at a high cost that not everyone can afford. That is why it is necessary to democratise access to AI innovation, as will be achieved with AI factories," stressed the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, Óscar López.

For her part, the Minister for Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, underlined the Government's commitment to a project that "will enable us to position Spain as one of the benchmark countries in the development of Artificial Intelligence and, furthermore, to encourage both the public and private sectors to develop R&D projects with a notable impact on science and technology".

The investment that will be made to make BSC-CNS one of the first European AI factories includes, in particular:

• A set of services to foster the innovative ecosystem around AI: access to optimised AI supercomputing resources, a data space for training, software libraries and advanced technical support. It will also include a training programme, startup accelerators, as well as the creation of sectoral nodes to foster the deployment of AI in sectors such as healthcare, regulation, finance, the public sector, etc.
• The upgrade of the Marenostrum 5 supercomputer by acquiring a new cluster specifically for AI training.
• A platform for experimenting with new AI technologies, so that companies can test their innovations before going to market.

AI Factories' will be dynamic interconnected ecosystems and will foster innovation, collaboration and development in the field of AI, bringing together the necessary ingredients - computing power, data and talent - to generate new AI-based technologies.

This programme is aligned with Europe's strategy and the Draghi report to foster the investment needed to create an innovative AI ecosystem, so that Europe not only improves its competitiveness and innovation in AI, but also ensures its strategic sovereignty and improves control over data and security, ensuring trustworthy AI models.