Data Science & Artificial Intelligence

The JUPITER AI Factory started on 1 November 2025. It will establish a low-barrier AI ecosystem around JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer. This will provide both researchers and businesses, including SMEs and startups, access to top-class AI resources and know-how, thereby contributing significantly to Germany’s and Europe’s technological sovereignty.

The JUPITER AI Factory (JAIF) is one of currently 19 AI factories in Europe, but it is the only one built around an exascale supercomputer. AI factories are set to establish AI ecosystems around European supercomputers, which shall facilitate researchers’ and businesses’ access to AI resources, services, and knowledge. The JAIF project started on 1 November 2025 with a runtime of three years; half of its funding comes from the European supercomputing initiative EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), with an additional quarter each from the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW NRW) and the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Arts and Culture (HMWK).

AI factories are currently being established by the European Commission to close the currently widening gap between AI research and its application in the real world. For this purpose, the factories shall provide researchers in the European Union as well as European businesses (particularly SMEs and startups) and the public sector with simple access to AI infrastructures of the European supercomputers.

After the supercomputer JUPITER has been ceremonially inaugurated on 5 September 2025, including attendance of Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Minister-President of the state North Rhine-Westphalia Hendrik Wüst, its corresponding AI factory JAIF followed suit with its kick-off meeting held in November in Schloss Rahe near Aachen.

JAIF’s core elements encompass, on the one hand, the development and low-barrier provision of AI models and AI services as well as the provision and management of data sets for researchers and businesses. A special focus of JAIF is the trustworthiness of its AI services and surrounding applications. On the other hand, JAIF focuses also on the exchange with various industries and the public sector. For this purpose, JAIF develops training courses and offers co-working of JAIF customers with JAIF experts available to provide support. Additionally, JAIF facilitates the exchanges on technical level with the public sector as well as businesses from the healthcare, energy, climate and environment, education/culture/media, finance and insurance, and manufacturing sectors.

Fraunhofer FIT is an integral part of JAIF and involved in all mentioned activities. Besides supporting the training and optimization of AI models as well as the co-development of AI services for JAIF, Fraunhofer FIT contributes on a technical level to data management and the development of intuitive user interfaces. Further, Fraunhofer FIT is instrumental in developing processes for onboarding customers and in developing training courses. Finally, Fraunhofer FIT’s exchange with businesses focuses on the energy, finance, and insurance sectors.

For these activities, Fraunhofer FIT seizes the versatile expertise of its different departments. The department Data Science and Artificial Intelligence contributes the expertise of various research groups to support the technical development of AI models and AI services, and to support data management and trustworthiness-related activities. Further, the Learning Center develops high-quality training courses for varying levels of starting knowledge with support of the Fraunhofer Personnel Certification Authority. The department Digital Energy focuses on the exchange with businesses from the energy sector. The department Human-Centered Engineering and Design supports the development of user interfaces as well as human-centered activities such as customer onboarding. Finally, the Generative AI Lab focuses on the dissemination of the project’s results and the business-centered communication.

Overall, the JAIF consortium consists of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, the AI Center at RWTH Aachen University, the Fraunhofer institutes FIT and IAIS, hessian.AI, as well as the Belgian AI Factory Antenna and the Hungarian AI Factory Antenna.