A new €10 million European project aims to accelerate AI adoption among businesses and researchers across the UK, unlocking untapped economic and scientific potential.
This initiative, led by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaining (EuroHPC JU), aims to help organizations take the first steps in AI adoption, deepen understanding of the technology and its applications, and demonstrate how AI can increase productivity and drive economic growth.
The UK’s first national supercomputing centre, EPCC at the University of Edinburgh, has secured EU and UK government funding to establish and operate the UK AI Factory Antenna (UKAIFA).
The project will employ a team of 20 staff at EPCC to develop a suite of services for UK start-ups, SMEs, large corporations and the public sector.
Strengthen AI adoption across critical sectors
AI Factory Antenna will build on the UK’s existing strengths and work with partners to accelerate the adoption of AI in sectors such as health, fintech, energy, creative industries, advanced engineering and robotics.
AI Factory Antenna is part of the European Union’s AI Factories initiative, which fosters innovation, collaboration, and research in the field of AI by bringing together compute, data, and talent to develop AI that benefits everyone.
AI Factory Antenna also allows countries outside the EU, such as the UK, to partner with AI Factory, bringing benefits to each country.
The UK Government has selected EPCC to lead the UK bid to secure an AI Factory antenna through a competitive expression of interest process. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will provide £2.5m of the funding.
Professor Mark Parsons, EPCC Director and UKAIFA Lead Coordinator, said: “EPCC and HLRS have led industry in the use of national supercomputing services in Europe for the past 30 years.
“The emergence of AI as a major application of supercomputing, and funding from EuroHPC and the UK Government, has enabled our organization to embark on this new collaboration.”
International cooperation with HammerHAI
EPCC’s UK AI Factory antenna is based at the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), Germany’s first national supercomputing centre, and collaborates with the HammerHAI AI Factory, which is coordinated in partnership with a consortium of Germany’s leading academic research centres.
HLRS and HammerHAI will collaborate with local manufacturing, engineering, and research sectors to better harness the power of AI.
“Given HLRS and EPCC’s shared commitment and expertise in bringing HPC and AI to industry, UKAIFA is a perfect fit for HammerHAI,” said Dr. Bastian Koller, Managing Director of HLRS and Principal Coordinator of HammerHAI.
“This will allow us to build on our successes to date and focus on the most pressing challenges European companies currently face in adopting and scaling up AI adoption.”
Dennis Hoppe, head of HLRS converged computing and project manager for HammerHAI, added: “This partnership strengthens HammerHAI’s commitment to driving AI innovation across industries in Europe.
“Together, we will help accelerate AI adoption and provide secure and scalable AI resources for academia and business.”
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