Romania is entering a new phase in artificial intelligence development as the RO AI Factory project officially began on 1 September, hosted by the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI Bucharest) and scheduled to become operational by end-2027. The initiative will give Romania its own infrastructure for developing, training, testing and validating AI models and applications, accessible to research, business and the public sector.

“The official launch of RO AI Factory comes after a period in which we had already begun building a community around this initiative,” said Adrian-Victor Vevera, Director General of ICI Bucharest. “We want RO AI Factory to become a meeting point for research, academia, companies and the public sector, and a framework where infrastructure, expertise and collaboration lead to concrete projects and solutions.”

The project – “Romanian EuroHPC AI Factory at ICI Bucharest”, Grant Agreement No. 101314645 – is funded by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) through the HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2025-AI call.

ICI Bucharest serves as the Hosting Entity, responsible for installing, integrating and operating the high-performance computing infrastructure dedicated to AI. Implementation will be carried out with the project’s co-coordinator, the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest, and a consortium of national partners.

ICI’s hosting role strengthens Romania’s position in the EuroHPC ecosystem and marks a new stage in connecting national research and innovation capacities to European high-performance computing networks. RO AI Factory will provide HPC infrastructure together with an integrated ecosystem of resources, services, expertise and skills designed to support research, innovation and large-scale adoption of AI.

The project foresees an extensive service portfolio: access to HPC resources, support for developing and training AI models, data infrastructures and services, algorithm libraries, and tools for responsible and trustworthy AI. A central objective is democratising access to advanced AI and supercomputing resources. Services will target universities, research organisations, start-ups, SMEs, technology companies, industry and public institutions.

Special focus will be placed on start-ups and SMEs, helping them move from being technology users to active developers and innovators. Access to infrastructure will be complemented by technical expertise, training programmes, mentoring and support for developing, testing and validating new AI-based products and services. The aim is to reduce technological and skills-related barriers that currently limit access to large-scale AI infrastructures and to create favourable conditions for turning research results into solutions with economic and societal impact.

The consortium brings together ICI Bucharest, POLITEHNICA Bucharest, the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (UTCN), the National Institute for Research and Development in Biological Sciences (INCDSB), Transilvania IT Association (ATIT), the Mihai Draganescu Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (ICIA), the National Council of Romania’s Private SMEs (CNIPMMR) and the Romanian Digital Innovation Hubs Association (RoDIH). Their complementary expertise connects HPC and AI infrastructure with academic research, skills development, application development and direct engagement with start-ups, SMEs and regional innovation ecosystems.

RO AI Factory will operate as part of the European network of AI Factories coordinated by EuroHPC JU, contributing to the EU objective of building a competitive, secure and sustainable ecosystem for AI development. Integration with this network will allow Romania to participate directly in European exchanges of resources, data, expertise and best practices, opening new opportunities for cross-border collaboration among researchers, universities, companies and public administrations.

The implementation schedule begins with preparing hosting capacities and installing hardware systems, followed by service integration and connection to national and European infrastructures. RO AI Factory is expected to be fully operational by late 2027, with services and the ecosystem expanded progressively.