2025 in review: AI Factory, training and support
2025 in review: AI Factory, training and support
auf Deutsch
Intensive, productive, and impactful – three words that sum up our 2025. Experts from our team were right at the forefront as an AI Factory was built from scratch in Austria; we held around 40 training sessions for (aspiring) HPC professionals and had around 40 meetings with start-ups and SMEs interested in HPC and AI.
Austria’s AI Factory for start-ups and SMEs
EuroCC began as a leading high-performance computing (HPC) project in Europe and by 2024 was heading full speed towards artificial intelligence (AI). We increasingly handled projects centred around AI, so it was only logical that this would develop into an independent initiative. In 2025, with the EU’s call for AI Factories, the first major milestone in AI was set: on 12 March, Austria was awarded one of what is currently 13 AI Factories in Europe.
The application process moved unusually fast: at the end of 2024 the call opened, and a tight-knit team of AI experts worked full steam for a month – Christmas included – to prepare the application, submitting the documents in January. Just a few weeks later, it was official: Austria would be getting an AI Factory!
And of course, that was when the real work began. Since October, AI:AT has been operational, and we remain closely involved. While AI:AT focuses on supporting AI-driven use cases, EuroCC Austria places a stronger emphasis on supporting researchers and companies with classical HPC workloads, such as large-scale simulations and numerical modeling.
We shared invaluable knowledge through our training
Claudia Blaas-Schenner and her team have effectively shared HPC know-how: in 2025, internal and external trainers held around 40 courses and webinars, expanding the knowledge of about 800 people. All EuroCC training sessions are free of charge for European businesses, researchers and public sector employees.
What were our key topics? AI, of course. But also the classic foundations of high-performance computing: MPI, parallelisation, Linux command line, CUDA, Python and C++.
By the way, the first training sessions for 2026 are already planned and will focus on artificial intelligence. They will be hosted by the AI Factory Austria and Austrian Scientific Computing (ASC). Overview.
We supported unique start-ups with HPC infrastructure
This year, too, we had the pleasure of supporting exceptional researchers as well as start-ups and their founders with HPC infrastructure and consulting. We’ve shared their stories – their visions, challenges and solutions – in a number of success stories:
AI reshapes TU Wien’s research matrix
How do you update a university’s research priorities when science itself keeps evolving? With a sharp mind (AI consultant Thomas Haschka), a brand-new high-performance computing system called MUSICA – and a healthy dose of artificial intelligence. The result: a tool that now forms the foundation of TU Wien’s new research strategy.
How a start-up is rethinking the nuclear industry
Anyone who wants to build and operate a nuclear power plant must provide extensive documentation – a process that costs both time and money. To change that, the Italian start-up CAELUS has trained the world’s first AI model capable of handling administrative and regulatory tasks. EuroCC Austria provided computing resources and technical support.
Vienna-based start-up develops new AI tool for music production
The Vienna-based start-up Beat Shaper has developed an AI tool for electronic music that can generate not only complete songs, but also editable project data – a feature no other provider currently offers. All training data is fully licensed, making the tool a safe choice from a legal perspective.
Less CO₂ in shipping with revolutionary AI Model
Greek start-up AlongRoute, with the support of EuroCC Austria, has developed an AI model for the Mediterranean Sea that outperforms traditional weather forecasting tools and helps protect both budgets and the planet.
How AI is learning to predict cell behaviour
The Vienna-based biotech company Myllia is training an AI model on the EuroHPC supercomputer Leonardo that could revolutionise research in personalised medicine. The initial results are impressive.
Supercomputer turns out to be the perfect home for butterflies
Butterflies are important indicators of biodiversity, but classifying them through experts is very time-consuming. Recently, using the Innsbruck supercomputer and a new machine learning model, it was possible to identify species with 97% accuracy.
Laying the groundwork for exchange: live events
Our collaboration with the Vienna Data Science Group helped us grow our network – especially in the area of artificial intelligence – and share our HPC expertise more broadly. In April, we co-hosted the annual Austrian-Slovenian HPC Meeting (ASHPC) with our Slovenian colleagues. The event brought together 140 participants from ten countries in Slovenia. From 19 to 22 May, there were five keynotes, 47 talks, a poster session, an ASC user meeting and two round tables.
Networking within the sector is everything, which is why HPC experts from our team also attended the EuroHPC Summit (18–20 March, Kraków), Digital Europe 2025 (10 April, Vienna), the AI for Science conference (22–26 September, Ljubljana), the EuroHPC User Days 2025 (30 September–1 October, Copenhagen) and the Sling Days (19–20 November, Ljubljana).
We’re especially committed to encouraging young women in HPC. That’s why we support the global initiative Women in High-Performance Computing (WHPC) – including through communications work such as our blog post introducing the newly founded Eastern European Chapter of WHPC. WHPC’s work is gaining increasing recognition in the community, as demonstrated by the WHPC poster session at ISC High Performance.
Thank you
We would like to thank our EU-level funding entity, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), as well as our national funding bodies: Federal Ministry of Education, Federal Ministry of Innovation, Mobility and Infrastructure (BMIMI) and Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft (FFG). We also thank our partners: Advanced Computing Austria (ACA), University of Vienna, TU Wien, BOKU University, INiTS | Vienna’s High-Tech Incubator and the dedicated team at Austrian Scientific Computing (ASC), which operates Austria’s supercomputers.
Looking ahead to 2026
In 2026, we’ll continue to support businesses, researchers and public institutions in leveraging High-Performance Computing (HPC). And so, in the coming year, we will be offering consulting, project support and training on the topic of HPC.
The first training sessions for 2026 are already set. Our programme is continuously updated – take a look: https://events.asc.ac.at
Registration for the Austrian-Slovenian HPC Meeting 2026 opens on 12 January: https://ashpc.eu/event/27. Abstract submissions are already possible: https://ashpc.eu/event/27/abstracts.
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We wish you a successful New Year!