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InvestAI initiative to mobilise strong investment in artificial intelligence

Published on
| 1 year ago
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  • Digital, Industry & Space
  • AI Continent

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has launched InvestAI, an initiative to mobilise €200 billion for investment in AI, including a new European fund of €20 billion for AI gigafactories. This large AI infrastructure is needed to allow open, collaborative development of the most complex AI models and to make Europe an AI continent.  

The EU's InvestAI fund will finance four future AI gigafactories across the EU. They will be specialised in training the most complex, very large, AI models. Such next-generation models require extensive computing infrastructure for breakthroughs in specific domains such as medicine or science. The gigafactories will have around 100 000 last-generation AI chips, around four times more than the AI factories being set up right now.

The gigafactories funded through InvestAI will be the largest public-private partnership in the world for the development of trustworthy AI. The goal is that every company, not only the biggest players, can access large-scale computing power to build the future.

InvestAI will include a layered fund, with shares of different risk and return profiles. The EU budget would derisk the investment of other partners. The Commission's initial funding for InvestAI will come from existing EU funding programmes which have a digital component, such as Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe, and InvestEU. Member States can also contribute by programming funds from their Cohesion envelopes.

More information on the context and other AI-related initiatives by the EU can be found in the Commission press release.

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