In 2023, the European Union approved the Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructures & Services (IPCEI-CIS), a 3 billion EUR initiative for the creation of a European cloud-edge computing continuum. Supported by 12 EU Member States and implemented by more than 120 industrial partners, its main objective is to develop the first interoperable and openly accessible data processing ecosystem in Europe. The IPCEI-CIS is now part of the larger 8ra initiative.

Conceived as a transversal integration pilot under the IPCEI-CIS, Fact8ra offers a multi-tenant AI-as-a-Service platform for the deployment of ready-to-use, private instances of open source Large Language Models. It is built on top of a sovereign AI infrastructure that combines HPC, public cloud, and telco edge resources across the EU. Based on European open source technologies, its initial phase involves the federation of GPU servers located in eight EU Member States.

By supporting a cloud-native, multi-tenant environment for AI inference and training, Fact8ra offers a unique solution for those individual AI Factories that want to provide SMEs and startups with easy access to public digital infrastructures. More than just a first industrial deployment under the IPCEI Cloud, Fact8ra is a crucial tool for establishing a European ecosystem for sovereign AI along the HPC-cloud-telco continuum, thus speeding up the technical implementation of the EU’s AI Continent Action Plan.