On 24 October 2025, members of the European Research and Education Networking Community came together for the very first meeting of the GÉANT Artificial Intelligence NREN Group, launching a new collaborative space for GÉANT member NRENs to share knowledge and best practices in the area of AI.
This new initiative opens a new, safe and trusted space for European NRENs to discuss and exchange ideas around the topic of AI and provides the opportunity to develop project collaborations in the field. The group was conceived through discussions in the existing Special Interest Group on AI (SIG-AI) and plans to maintain a strong collaboration with other community initiatives co-ordinated and supported by GÉANT.
SIG-AI and the GÉANT AI NREN Group
The GÉANT AI NREN Group and SIG-AI have distinct but closely connected scopes. SIG-AI explores the potential applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the context of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in a wider and more global context; as it has more than 130 participants from 35 different countries worldwide, including private companies and universities, involving a wide ecosystem of actors collaborating on the use and support of AI in research and education.
The new GÉANT AI NREN Group will focus instead on showcasing European initiatives and will bring together GÉANT member NRENs to discuss opportunities, collaborations and challenges. Discussions will then be aligned with the global community through SIG-AI.
Europe’s AI ecosystem and the role of NRENs
Meetings of the GÉANT AI NREN Group will continue in a series of monthly sessions, with the initial events focusing on AI Factories and AI Factories Antennas — two key pillars in Europe’s emerging AI ecosystem.
AI Factories (AIF) leverage the supercomputing capacity of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking to develop trustworthy cutting-edge generative AI models and are open to European users from various sectors, including industry, research, academia and public authorities. Fully integrated into the EuroHPC ecosystem, the AIF Antennas aim to expand access to AI talent, infrastructure, and innovation across Europe. The AIF Antennas will collaborate closely with AI Factories to provide other communities with secure remote access to world-class, AI-optimised supercomputing resources. In many countries NRENs are playing a key role in AIF and AIF Antennas. The motivation for these first meetings is to demonstrate how European NRENs are engaging on this topic.
For a map of AI Factories please visit: https://www.eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/document/download/0cda3482-1e9e-478d-b5f3-bf7dcee307ab_en?filename=EuroHPC%20AI%20Factories%20-%20Evangelos%20Floros_0.pdf
The first meeting of the GÉANT AI NREN Group on 24 October gathered over 50 online participants. Representatives from ARNES presented their involvement with SLAIF, the Slovenian AI Factory. They described how the project is integrating computing, data, and services under one national initiative that connects researchers, universities, and industry. SLAIF builds on Slovenia’s strong background in AI and leverages its national infrastructure, including the Vega supercomputer and Slovenian National Supercomputing Network (SLING) consortium, led by the Slovenian NREN – ARNES, to support both research and innovation. The initiative also aligns with Digital Slovenia 2030, setting the stage for a robust AI-for-science ecosystem.
Aleksi Kallio from CSC then shared the details of the LUMI AI Factory. LUMI AIF operates as a 10-country consortium, with Finland as the coordinating and hosting country, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Poland as LUMI Consortium members, plus Belgium, Iceland, Latvia, and Switzerland participating as AIF Antenna countries. With these combined elements, LUMI AIF represents a €650 million joint investment, making it the largest AI Factory initiative in Europe. While previous EuroHPC supercomputing efforts primarily served academia, LUMI AI Factory takes a broader view — emphasising economic impact, AI for Science, and the co-creation of AI solutions with startups and SMEs.
Both presentations emphasised that close cooperation with and across NRENs will be essential to enable high-speed data transfers, edge computing, and support for AI workloads in the years to come.
The meeting concluded with a lively discussion on how NRENs can contribute to the emerging European AI landscape. Participants agreed that connectivity, federated identities and community engagement will be crucial to success and NRENs can play an important role. They noted that the delivery of Hyperconnectivity by GÉANT and NRENs to the EuroHPC sites will strongly support this emerging AI ecosystem.
Final reflections and next steps
As the first in the series, the October meeting set a clear tone: Europe’s NRENs are not just enabling AI — they are becoming an integral part of the European AI ecosystem, connecting compute, data, and people across borders to accelerate discovery and innovation in AI. The meeting also confirmed the group’s main objective: to support the European community by sharing knowledge, best practices, and opportunities for collaboration in AI infrastructure and services, helping European NRENs to explore their role in the AI ecosystem, nationally and internationally.
Looking ahead, the next meeting on 14 November will continue to explore AI Factory best practices with presentations from PCSS (Poland) and GRNET (Greece). Registrations are open at: https://events.geant.org/event/1971/
The third meeting on 17 December will focus on the role of NRENs in AI Factory Antennas initiative.
The GÉANT AI NRENs Group Mailing List is exclusively for GÉANT member NRENs representatives, if you would like to join please contact partner-relations@geant.org
