Barcelona Digital City

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) will host one of the first seven artificial intelligence (AI) factories in Europe. The aim of the AI Factory is to democratize access to artificial intelligence and make it accessible to all economic sectors, especially those with limited resources, such as the biopharmaceutical sector or the climate sector. This initiative is aligned with the European Commission’s vision of developing ethical generative artificial intelligence to drive a sustainable, fair and inclusive economy in Europe.

The BSC AI Factory will therefore be a key element for the development of artificial intelligence in Europe, helping to consolidate Barcelona’s leadership as a capital of scientific and technological innovation at the European level, and will foster innovation in several strategic sectors such as biomedicine, climatology and chip design.

The objectives of the AI Factory

The BSC AI Factory will be a pioneering infrastructure designed to drive innovation and knowledge transfer in the field of generative artificial intelligence. It will be a proposal with a major impact on the public and private sector, enabling the development of R&D projects in areas of great interest such as health, education, data science and supercomputing.

In addition, the project will include an expansion of the supercomputing capacity with the modernization of the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, equipped with advanced AI technology for training and the development of generative models.

European, national and regional investment and support, with a public-private collaboration model for AI innovation

The “AI Factory” project will have a total investment of close to 198 million euros, with the support of the European Commission through the Horizon Europe program, which will contribute 98 million euros. The Spanish Government will also participate with 62 million euros, and the Generalitat de Catalunya, with 14 million euros. This initiative aims to consolidate Europe as a world reference in the development and application of AI, aligning technologies with the ethical and regulatory values of the European Union.

The AI Factory project not only boosts research in artificial intelligence, but also fosters public-private collaboration to ensure the success of innovation initiatives in Barcelona. Thanks to its infrastructure, startups, SMEs and large companies will be able to access supercomputing and AI services to develop innovative solutions that benefit different industrial and social sectors.

Barcelona, a benchmark in scientific and technological infrastructure

This initiative joins other high-impact projects that make Barcelona a scientific and technological hub of reference in Europe, such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), which is part of the city’s network of Singular Scientific and Technological Infrastructures (SSTI). These are unique infrastructures located within research centers and science parks where advanced research is carried out, and which offer their services to the scientific community and the business sector.

Thus, the SSTI have allowed the establishment of leading technological and scientific companies, as well as attracting and retaining talent in their field. This network includes institutions such as the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG), the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), which work together to promote research and innovation in strategic areas.

The BSC plays a key role in this infrastructure, offering the highest level of computational resources and is an engine of innovation for the entire business and scientific sector.

*Images courtesy of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – www.bsc.es.