Openchip, Catalonia's commitment to technological sovereignty, wins the Ignasi Pujol award

BarcelonaThe story of Openchip, which on Thursday night received the Ignasi Pujol award from the newspaper ARA, dedicated to highlighting a business initiative, began during the Covid pandemic, a time when a new dictionary filled with words like chipsandsemiconductorsThe shortage of microelectronic components, such as these chips, suddenly became a global and local problem. Society then learned that these components were essential to keeping the economy going, and alarm bells started ringing.

Openchip has often been dubbed asthe Catalan Nvidia(and European), although its leaders aren't entirely fond of this definition, but the company's main objective is to achieve technological sovereignty in Europe. The award was granted "for its strategic vision, developing very high-performance chips based on RISC-V using artificial intelligence and supercomputing, contributing to European digital sovereignty from Catalonia."

It was after the pandemic and faced with the evident need for local chips that the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and GTD, the technology-critical software group, jointly presented the Openchip project. "The idea was to do something to prevent this from happening again in the future," the company explains. "Our mission is to contribute to European technological sovereignty and see if we can provide alternative solutions to technologies that currently come from abroad, from companies like Nvidia, which are making very good products, but there is always this dependence on foreign technology," explains its CEO, Francesc Guim, in the ARA.

"Our idea is to create vertically integrated technological systems—to build all the necessary technological infrastructure for a data center—and to ensure that if you want to run your artificial intelligence applications in a data center, we can provide you with a European vertical solution," explains Guim. The project has become a priority in the country, and in fact, Openchip is the fourth Catalan organization to have received the most Next Generation funding, a total of 111 million euros, behind Adamo, the Barcelona City Council, and the BSC. The funding arrived in January 2024, bringing with it skilled and talented people from around the world, like Francesc Guim himself. Currently, they have more than 300 employees from 30 different countries.

The importance of chips

"There will come a time when all the everyday components we use will contain chips, and, for example, in research, medicine, critical infrastructure, and cybersecurity, there is already a very significant dependence on chips, which process all the data," Guim explains. "The moment you depend not on yourself but on third parties to supply all these products that are critical for Europe, you have a problem. It's like if we were 100% dependent on the United States for milk; what happens if they decide to cut off or legitimately seek other sources for their milk?" the CEO asserts. "That's why it's necessary to have your own technological and chip autonomy because it's basically like food—it's everywhere—and beyond data centers, it's needed for medical or critical infrastructure purposes; it's what makes the system work." During the pandemic, this was already becoming apparent. "It was a valuable learning experience that is now amplified by the current geopolitical climate, highlighting the immense importance of what is being done at the European level," says Guim. One of the challenges of this advanced technology is its high production cost. With the funding received, the company has been able to expand its skilled workforce, but they emphasize that printing just one chip costs 40 million euros. "And that's just for printing," Guim points out. "This is also one of the challenges facing Europe: if it wants to be sovereign in semiconductors, it must understand that in other sectors 100 million euros is a significant amount, but in this sector, 100 million euros will keep you afloat for a year," he asserts. Openchip began as a highly specific project focused on developing chips and software, but it has grown not only internally but, above all, through synergies with other European companies. The objective, then, is clear: "More than being the Nvidia of Europe, what I'm saying is that Europe should create the Nvidia of Europe; if we can define a European Nvidia, it should be a group of European companies joining forces," they explain.