Luxembourg announced today that it will become the first European country to launch an AI partnership with NVIDIA, a global pioneer in AI technology and GPU computing.
This collaboration follows a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on July 5, 2018 by NVIDIA and the Luxembourgish Government.
As part of this national agreement, a joint AI laboratory will be set up in Luxembourg. Here, the nation’s research community will have access to state-of-the-art NVIDIA hardware and software, as well as the opportunity to work closely with the organization’s world-class computer scientists.
Reflecting NVIDIA’s global AI research approach and supported by a joint advisory board, the lab will encourage development in a variety of fields. Those involved agree that artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and AI collaborations such as this one will play a crucial role in overcoming society’s most complex modern challenges.
Today’s announcement results from the joint efforts of Luxembourg’s research community, NVIDIA and Digital Luxembourg, a multidisciplinary government initiative that strengthens and guides the country’s digitalization efforts in pursuit of positive transformation.
Digital Luxembourg kickstarted the project after recognizing a need for advanced AI and computing resources in the local ecosystem. The demand for AI-related technologies exists in multiple industries, from finance to healthcare to space resources. Initially bootstrapped by the research community, the AI laboratory will eventually open its doors to Luxembourg’s industry partners and startup community.
“I am very glad to see that NVIDIA wants to be a part of Luxembourg’s growing pan-European innovation ecosystem. Digital Luxembourg has proven once again that it can provide the leverage our innovators need to reach for something big: AI research with NVIDIA’s direct help is big, ” noted Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. “Our country is proud to be the first in Europe to create an AI partnership with NVIDIA.”
A team will be set up to work on joint projects, with its six members coming from NVIDIA, the University of Luxembourg’s HPC Team; Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB); Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT); and the Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology (LIST).
In addition to the AI laboratory and in line with the MoU, Digital Luxembourg will support the creation of AI-related courses for Luxembourg’s innovators, researchers, industry experts and individuals.
“In the Post-Moore’s Law era, NVIDIA’s technology has become an indispensable tool for scientists and researchers seeking to accelerate and deploy the power of AI and high-performance computing, ” said Jaap Zuiderveld, Vice President of Sales and Marketing EMEA, NVIDIA. “This agreement brings together NVIDIA hardware, software and expertise to support Luxembourg’s research community as they tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems.”
“This partnership will give our researchers access to cutting-edge equipment, ” said University of Luxembourg Rector Stéphane Pallage. “But most importantly, it will enable them to tap into NVIDIA’s experience in addressing real-world problems using artificial intelligence. This will allow them to both identify new application areas and to push ahead with existing work, from our use of drones for automated airplane and bridge inspections to the analysis of genomes and mobile health sensor data.”
Fernand Reinig, CEO a.i., LIST, welcomed the agreement: “NVIDIA technology is proven to be the best for high-performance computing. LIST is working on innovation domains that require such high-performance capacities, in particular in Industry 4.0, in finance and RegTech, for the environment as well as for the autonomous vehicles. Moreover, through its numerous industrial partnerships, LIST will use this agreement to ease the link between NVIDIA technologies and local industry innovation.”
