EU Commission to Grant AI Startups Access to Supercomputers for Accelerated Development

The European Commission and the European Joint Undertaking for High-Performance Computing (EuroHPC JU) have committed to expanding access to EU supercomputer resources for European startups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the AI community at large. This initiative falls under the EU Startup Initiative for Artificial Intelligence. The relevant document has been posted on the European Commission's website.

As highlighted in the European Commission's release, the AI Grand Challenge, a major competition that commenced this week, encourages European startups to actively engage with large-scale artificial intelligence models. The competition will select up to four European startups in the AI field to gain access to EuroHPC's supercomputing capabilities. Additionally, a €1 million prize fund will be distributed among the winners. The victors are expected to release their developed models under an open-source licence for non-commercial use or publish the results of their research.

The three EU supercomputers — LEONARDO, LUMI, and MareNostrum5 — granted access to startups are world-class supercomputers. With future expansions in the capabilities of the JUPITER and JULES VERNE consortium supercomputers, which will be even more powerful in working with AI models, European supercomputing resources will play a crucial role in creating and training large-scale AI models.

The European Commission anticipates close collaboration between European players in the AI and high-performance computing markets to advance innovation and enhance the competitiveness of the European industrial AI ecosystem. This collaboration is expected to expedite the development of these technologies in Europe and strengthen the European Union's position as a global competitive leader in artificial intelligence.

Supported by the European Commission, EuroHPC member states will also accelerate research, development, demonstration, and deployment of European supercomputing infrastructure. This commitment aims to contribute to the EU's overarching goal of establishing a global artificial intelligence ecosystem that is trustworthy and responsible.

As a reminder, it was recently announced that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stepped down and will now be working at Microsoft.