Italy for Artificial Intelligence
The Italian AI Factory – IT4LIA is a strategic initiative co-funded by the EuroHPC JU (European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking), under the Digital Europe and Horizon Europe programmes. It aims to transform the artificial intelligence landscape at both the national and European levels through advanced infrastructure and a broad portfolio of services, leveraging a full range of computational resources to meet all AI workload requirements—including data preparation, processing, and training and inference services for AI models.
The AI Factory will provide specialized services in both high-priority strategic sectors for Europe and Italy -such as agritech and agri-food, cybersecurity, weather and climate, and manufacturing– and cross-sectoral services, including consulting, networking, and matchmaking. A strong emphasis is placed on supporting SMEs and startups through a set of customized services as well as via open calls that will provide free access to computational resources, expertise, and end-to-end project support. Additionally, the AI Factory will implement a comprehensive training program that includes a Learning Platform for self-paced learning, hackathons, internships, and numerous in-person training events.
IT4LIA will benefit from the EuroHPC Leonardo supercomputer, its AI-powered LISA system, the GAIA cloud, and the new advanced AI-optimized supercomputer to be developed as part of the project, all situated within the Bologna Tecnopolo data center – DAMA. This world-class infrastructure hub will serve Italy’s and Europe’s rapidly expanding AI ecosystem, fostering Italian and European competitiveness world-wide.
The initiative is co-funded by the Ministry of University and Research, the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN), the Emilia-Romagna Region, CINECA, the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), the ItaliaMeteo Agency, the Italian Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industry (AI4I), the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK), and is participated by Austria and Slovenia.
Other organizations participating in the action are: the National Research Center in HPC Big data and Quantum Computing, four universities (Modena and Reggio Emilia, Bologna, Turin and Sapienza), Confindustria, the Attractiveness Research Territory organization of the Emilia Romagna region (ART-ER), and the International Foundation Big Data (IFAB).
ItaliaMeteo expertise plays a key role in the data driven services design and implementation based on the observed weather data and prediction. Moreover, the involvement of the Agency as national weather service is essential to guide the AI Factory in developing innovative and reliable AI based services and foster the dissemination among users.
More information: https://it4lia-aifactory.eu/
Read the press release.