The Government approves injecting 14 million euros for the BSC to train advanced AI models
The BSC AI Factory aims to make high-performance computing resources available to the research system and the productive fabric
BarcelonaThe Government will approve this Tuesday at the executive council meeting to allocate fourteen million euros for the deployment in Barcelona of one of the first European artificial intelligence factories. It is the BSC AI Factory project, an artificial intelligence infrastructure driven by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Center (BSCCNS).
According to the Department of Research and Universities, the project "will place Catalonia among the main European hubs in the development and application of artificial intelligence". The BSC AI Factory will involve expanding the capabilities of the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer with new accelerators specific for artificial intelligence, and will make possible the training and development of advanced AI models and facilitate the transfer of this knowledge to productive sectors.
In fact, the objective of this infrastructure is to make high-performance computational resources, data, tools, and specialized services available to the research system and the productive fabric so that companies and public administration can develop new products, services, and applications based on AI. The factory is expected to be particularly relevant in areas such as health, biomedicine, the design of new materials, industry, climatology, or the development of semiconductors.
The BSC's AI factory is part of the new generation of infrastructures driven by Europe to accelerate the development of secure, responsible artificial intelligence aligned with European values. The project received approval from the European Commission at the end of 2024 and a total investment of 198 million euros is planned.
Catalonia, European epicenter in AI
The BSC AI Factory initiative was a proposal that the BSC itself made to the Catalan and Spanish governments to opt to present itself as a candidate to host one of the first AI factories. In the announcement of the project's approval by the European Commission in December 2024, the different institutions assured that this new factory would make Catalonia an epicenter in the development of artificial intelligence in Europe.
Furthermore, the Spanish government argued that the project must also be useful for citizens, as these types of factories must serve to "democratize" access to AI innovation.