Through the Ministries for Digital Transformation and Public Administration and Science, Innovation and Universities, the Government of Spain will invest 61.76 million euros in the first Artificial Intelligence factory in Spain. It is one of the first seven European AI factories that the European Commission has announced for launching 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 startups can also take advantage of its resources, and not just the research community as is currently the case.

In addition to backing from the Government of Spain, the project will also receive support from the Regional Government of Catalonia, which will contribute 14 million euros, and from countries like Portugal, Turkey and Romania, which will make contributions totalling 98.86 million euros. This is in addition to the contribution of 98.33 million from the EUROHPC JU, the institution promoting the AI Factories initiative.

The money that will be invested 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 sector nodes to foster the deployment of AI in industries such as healthcare, regulation, finance, the public sector, etc.
• The Marenostrum 5 supercomputer will be upgraded 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 guarantees its strategic sovereignty and has better control over data and security, thereby ensuring trustworthy AI models.