2025-10-01 –, Auditorium
The European Union is in the process of investing significant amounts of public funding in deploying advanced AI infrastructures across the continent, which are expected to support EU businesses (particularly startups and SMEs) develop new AI models by providing easy access to the computational power they need. This talk will introduce how the €3B Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services (IPCEI-CIS) is developing an open source software stack that will provide those AI Factories with a sovereign alternative to the proprietary solutions offered by non-EU Big Tech vendors. This stack is already being deployed across Europe as part of Fact8ra.AI
In late 2023, the European Commission approved the 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 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. European open source software plays a crucial role in building a truly sovereign AI infrastructure for Fact8ra. Some of the main technological components that have been used for this first industrial deployment include well-known solutions such as OpenNebula, openSUSE, and MariaDB. This talk will showcase Fact8ra's capabilities for supporting AI inference based on open source Large Language Models “made in Europe”.
Constantino Vázquez Blanco is a long-time open source advocate and currently drives innovation around Cloud-Edge Continuum platforms at OpenNebula Systems. With extensive experience in building and validating GPU-enabled clusters, energy-aware orchestration frameworks, and AI-ready infrastructures, he has been leading multiple initiatives under the European IPCEI-CIS project. His work focuses on bridging research and production through open, community-driven testbeds—covering advanced virtualization, storage, and automation frameworks. Constantino is passionate about sustainable cloud design, open collaboration, and enabling the next generation of edge-to-cloud platforms powered by open source.