The University of Edinburgh has secured EU and UK Government funding to establish the £8.6 million UK AI Factory Antenna (UKAIFA), a European-backed initiative aimed at boosting AI adoption among businesses and researchers across the UK.
Set to begin operations next year at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) — the UK’s first National Supercomputing Centre — the project will be led by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU). Its core focus is helping organisations take their first steps into artificial intelligence, building wider literacy in the technology, and ultimately driving productivity and economic growth.
The initiative will employ a team of 20 full-time staff based at EPCC, developing a range of services aimed at UK start-ups, SMEs, larger industrial companies and the public sector. A particular focus will be placed on accelerating AI adoption in sectors including health, fintech, energy, advanced engineering, robotics and the creative industries.
Sir Peter Mathieson, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, said the investment underlines the city’s world-leading capabilities in supercomputing and AI, and highlighted the role universities play in deepening understanding of cutting-edge technology, supporting industry and the public sector, and ultimately driving economic growth and job creation.
UKAIFA forms part of the European Union’s wider AI Factories initiative, which is designed to foster innovation, collaboration and research in artificial intelligence across Europe. The Edinburgh-based project will collaborate closely with the HammerHAI AI Factory, based at and coordinated by the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), Germany’s first National Supercomputing Centre.
Mark Parsons, EPCC Director and UKAIFA Lead Coordinator, noted that EPCC and HLRS have led the way in industry use of national supercomputing services across Europe over the past 30 years. He said the rise of AI as a major application of supercomputing, combined with this funding from EuroHPC and the UK Government, has enabled the two organisations to embark on a new phase of collaboration, adding that EPCC was honoured to be working once again with HLRS and the University of Stuttgart.
EPCC was selected by the UK Government to lead the UK’s bid for an AI Factory Antenna through a competitive expression of interest process, with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology contributing £2.5 million towards the funding.
UK Government AI Minister Kanishka Narayan described the initiative as another step in the UK’s plan to become a global “AI maker.” He said working closely with European partners gives the UK’s leading researchers access to the processing power, data and training needed to drive new breakthroughs across fields ranging from healthcare to climate change, adding that Edinburgh — already set to host the UK’s most powerful national supercomputer — is well placed to strengthen the UK’s compute capacity and its ties with Europe.
