EU orders AI supercomputer from Bull as demand exceeds capacity

By Leo Marchandon

Aug 31 (Reuters) - The European Union on Monday awarded French state-owned Bull a 387.8 million euro ($449.4 million) contract to build a new AI-focused supercomputer, the company's largest-ever order, as Europe seeks to expand computing capacity and close the gap with the United States and China.

The deal was struck just months after the French state carved Bull out of debt-laden Atos, as EuroHPC officials say demand for AI computing power exceeds available capacity.

EuroHPC, the European Union's supercomputing body, selected Bull to build LUMI-AI, the sixth system ordered under its AI Factories programme. The machine will be installed alongside the existing LUMI supercomputer in Finland and is expected to become operational in the second half of 2027.

The order expands a network EuroHPC has spent years building. Backed by an 8.2 billion euro budget through 2027, the organisation has established 19 AI Factories around 12 supercomputers and plans further expansion.

"Right now, we have to reject some applications because we cannot satisfy all these demands," EuroHPC infrastructure head Evangelos Floros told reporters.

He said capacity constraints should ease as additional systems come online from late this year.

Floros said the network has become Europe's main platform for advancing AI, with AI Factories adding systems designed specifically for AI training and applications.

Bull will integrate AI chips from Nvidia's main competitor AMD, storage from IBM and networking technology from Nokia.EuroHPC systems are already being used by European AI developers. OVHcloud has told Reuters it completed initial training of a foundation model on Germany's Jupiter supercomputer, while Italian startup Domyn, the Italian startup leading the Commission-backed EUROPA consortium, is using EuroHPC infrastructure to train its own model.

($1 = 0.8630 euros)

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Matt Scuffham)