LUMI AI Factory empowering European startups and SMEs to unlock AI’s full potential

The LUMI AI Factory, one of the European Union’s first AI Factories, will be a pioneering AI solution that seamlessly integrates world-class computing power, high-value data, and top-tier AI talent. The LUMI AI Factory will act as a state-of-the-art expert support center and hub offering European companies and researchers a comprehensive innovation environment offering unmatched support for AI-driven projects. The services will be free of charge for startups, SMEs, and academic researchers. Today marks the launch of the LUMI AI Factory.

Service development at the LUMI AI Factory focuses especially on new challenges coming from strategically selected key sectors: manufacturing, health and life sciences, and communication technologies and networks. In addition, the LUMI AI Factory will leverage advancements in simulation and AI to drive innovation in digital twins and AI for science across key focus areas, including climate and weather, materials technology, and language. The LUMI AI Factory serves as a joint platform and accelerator for RDI activities by companies, research groups and public actors.

The LUMI AI Factory has a broad support and commitment from a consortium including Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Poland. The LUMI AI Factory will be hosted at CSC – IT Center for Science.

– LUMI AI Factory is very important to Finland as a whole, especially to Kajaani. The government and CSC have done a remarkable job, and it is a pleasure to be at the project’s launch. High-performance computing is a significant strength and an international competitive factor for us. LUMI AI Factory will enable the next generation of scientific breakthroughs, pioneering research collaboration, and growth and development for companies. These will make Finland a world leader in high-performance computing, said Finland’s Minister of Science and Culture Mari-Leena Talvitie in her speech.

An innovation hub for startup and SME success

The LUMI AI Factory will become the premier expert support center and hub for unlocking the potential of AI for European startups, SMEs, academic researchers, and other public and private users. The AI Factory will provide a comprehensive service portfolio catered to diverse users. From training and fine-tuning AI models in a supercomputing environment to expert guidance on computational challenges and access to cutting-edge tools, data, and software, the AI Factory will empower European and Finnish businesses, researchers, and innovators in an unprecedented way.

– LUMI AI Factory, in collaboration with the European Union and our consortium partners, is taking Europe’s AI development to the next level together with the other European AI Factories. We provide world-class computing resources, novel datasets, and tailored competence development with a wide array of services catered for diverse users — empowering businesses and researchers across Europe and Finland like never before, says CSC’s Managing Director Kimmo Koski.

Unlocking data to empower users is one of the core drivers of the Service Center. The Datasets-as-a-Service will spearhead access and enable groundbreaking use of high-value datasets such as the European Open Web Index produced by OpenWebSearch.eu project, spatial data, and speech data.

All this comes together in a hub: the LUMI AI Factory will provide dynamic co-working spaces tailored to diverse needs and goals. Its main hub, located at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, will serve as a vibrant center for nurturing talent, fostering collaboration, and driving innovation among startups, SMEs, scientific communities, and students. To extend its reach and collaboration, a network of satellite hubs will be established in partner countries. Complementing these physical spaces, the LUMI AI Factory Service Center will offer a comprehensive virtual workspace, enabling seamless cooperation across borders.

Not your average data center

In the beginning, the LUMI AI Factory will leverage the power of the LUMI supercomputer. The LUMI supercomputer, located in CSC’s data center in Kajaani, Finland, comes with numerous benefits and tangible impacts, making the entire LUMI system stand out from many other data centers.

The LUMI supercomputer is one of the world’s most powerful AI platforms for science. Nearly 3,000 research projects have been run on LUMI, with over half incorporating AI, driving academic breakthroughs and industrial RDI across Europe. When the current LUMI supercomputer’s lifecycle comes to its end, it will gradually be replaced by a new AI-focused supercomputer called LUMI-AI. This system will leverage a large, accelerated partition utilising next-generation GPUs.

The LUMI-AI computing environment will be complemented by an experimental quantum computing platform named LUMI-IQ, designed for workloads combining quantum computing and artificial intelligence. This one-of-a-kind platform will open completely new horizons for research. LUMI-AI and LUMI-IQ will form the most advanced public quantum-accelerated HPC+AI research infrastructure in the world.

Like the current LUMI system, the upcoming system will be fully powered by carbon-free renewable energy, and its waste heat will be utilized in the district heating system of the city of Kajaani, making the installation one of the most energy-efficient and eco-efficient large AI supercomputers in the world. One of the purposes of the data center is among others to provide a better understanding of climate change and tools for fighting it. This is referred to as a positive handprint, which relates to the benefits of green research and innovation on climate and the environment.

Fostering Europe’s AI development

Developing AI skills is crucial for Europe’s economic growth, societal well-being, and technological sovereignty. Dozens of companies across Europe have already utilised LUMI, and many of them have deployed AI in their RDI processes. As an example, the Finnish-based company AMD Silo AI developed its first large language models using the LUMI supercomputer. Massive and open language models are needed because they lay the foundation for next-generation AI applications. It’s critical for Europe to boost the development of European language models to secure control and competence in the whole chain from data selection to aligning models with social values.

DigiFarm, a Norwegian company using LUMI’s HPC and AI resources, is revolutionizing global agriculture. LUMI’s resources accelerated DigiFarm’s product development significantly: the time-to-market was shortened by 6 months. DigiFarm’s technology helps farmers, agricultural companies, and authorities optimize resource management, reducing costs by 10% while increasing crop yield and efficiency.

– LUMI represents a turning point for us and will undoubtedly greatly impact our ability to deliver innovative solutions for the agricultural sector. Access to LUMI allows us to accelerate development and significantly improve our model’s precision, says Nils Helset, founder and CEO of DigiFarm.

Contact information:

Kimmo Koski, Managing Director, CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd., p. 050 381 9777, kimmo.koski@csc.fi
Pekka Manninen, Director of the LUMI AI Factory, CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd., p. 050 381 2831, pekka.manninen@csc.fi
Aleksi Kallio, Director of the LUMI AI Factory Service Center, CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd., p. 050 384 5158, aleksi.kallio@csc.fi

More information

Stream from the LUMI AI Factory launch available here.

More information about the LUMI AI Factory available here.