Supercomputing and AI Factories: Regions meet in Brussels to define the strategic role of HPC infrastructures in building European digital sovereignty, ensuring technological autonomy, industrial competitiveness, and democratic access to innovation in the face of global giants.
On March 26, 2026, the event “AI Factories and High Performance Computing: Regions in Dialogue for European Digital Sovereignty” took place at the Brussels office of the Emilia-Romagna Region. The discussion provided an important opportunity to reflect on the strategic role of supercomputing infrastructure and emerging AI Factories in strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty.
At the heart of the debate was a key question: how can Europe reinforce its technological autonomy in a global landscape dominated by the United States and China, while ensuring industrial competitiveness, innovation, and democratic access to advanced technologies?
The initiative comes at a particularly significant moment for European policymaking. Through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, the European Union has launched a major investment plan to develop AI Factories—new infrastructures dedicated to training and deploying advanced AI models, closely integrated with existing European supercomputers.
The objective is twofold: to strengthen Europe’s computational capacity and to create an ecosystem where research, industry, and public administrations can access strategic resources without relying on non-EU providers.
Digital sovereignty as a political priority
The concept of digital sovereignty emerged as the guiding theme of the entire event. It is not only about owning advanced technological infrastructures, but also about controlling data, computing capacity and the tools needed to develop innovation in an autonomous and secure way.
In recent years, the growing centrality of artificial intelligence has made it clear that control over computing power represents a geopolitical factor. Large AI models require enormous computational capacity, which is currently accessible mainly through global hyperscalers, most of which are based in the United States.
Europe therefore risks becoming a simple user of technologies developed elsewhere, losing industrial capacity and strategic independence.
For this reason, the European Commission and the Member States are investing in AI Factories as a new generation of public and federated infrastructures. By the end of 2024, the first seven European sites had been selected, followed by six additional locations in 2025, with the objective of creating a continental network of AI Factories connected to the main European supercomputers.
The InvestAI initiative announced by President Ursula von der Leyen also foresees a total mobilisation of up to €200 billion, including €20 billion allocated to the so-called AI Gigafactories.
The strategic role of Regions
One of the most interesting aspects that emerged during the discussion concerns the role of Regions as key actors in this transformation. AI Factories are not simply large data centres. They are territorial ecosystems that require universities, research centres, innovative companies, start-ups, specialised skills and multi-level governance capacity.
In this context, Emilia-Romagna represents one of the most advanced cases at European level. The Bologna Technopole is now one of the main European hubs for supercomputing, thanks to the presence of the Leonardo supercomputer, one of the most powerful HPC infrastructures in the world, and of an ecosystem that integrates scientific research, advanced manufacturing, big data and artificial intelligence.
Leonardo, operational since 2022, is one of the flagship systems of EuroHPC, with over 249 petaflops of sustained performance. This positioning makes Bologna and Emilia-Romagna a European laboratory for experimenting with territorial models of innovation governance. The approach is not one of simple infrastructure concentration, but of building a “Data Valley” capable of attracting talent, investment and new industrial value chains.
During the event, it was underlined that European competitiveness will depend on the ability to transform computational capacity into widespread economic and social value. In this process, regions play an essential role in connecting European policies with the real needs of territories.
HPC and AI Factories: continuity and transformation
Another central theme of the discussion concerned the relationship between High Performance Computing and AI Factories. AI Factories do not replace traditional HPC, but represent its natural evolution.
Historically, European supercomputers have been designed mainly for advanced scientific research, such as climate simulations, genomics, particle physics and industrial modelling. Today, with the expansion of generative artificial intelligence, there is a growing need to use these infrastructures also for training, inference and AI services accessible to companies.
AI Factories therefore introduce a new dimension. Not only computing power, but also services, cloud-native platforms, accessibility for start-ups and SMEs, development tools and application support.
As also highlighted in recent European debates, the real step forward lies in overcoming the traditional separation between HPC and cloud, integrating high performance with ease of use.
This transition is particularly relevant for the European productive system, which is characterised by a strong presence of small and medium-sized enterprises that would struggle to access such infrastructures independently.
Italy and the IT4LIA project
In the Italian context, particular attention was given to the IT4LIA AI Factory project, which represents one of the main national initiatives within the European framework. The project involves actors such as CINECA, AI4I, the Ministry of University and Research, the Emilia-Romagna Region and other strategic stakeholders.
The objective is to build a national platform capable of providing Italian companies, especially in the manufacturing sector, with advanced AI tools based on European sovereign infrastructures.
In this framework, AI4I plays an important role as a technology transfer actor towards the industrial system, with particular attention to high-intensity sectors such as automotive, aerospace and advanced manufacturing.
Italy therefore aims to position itself not only as a user of AI, but also as a producer of technological capacity, strengthening the link between industrial policy and digital policy.
A long-term European challenge
The event clearly showed that building European digital sovereignty cannot be addressed as a single sectoral policy. It requires an integrated vision that brings together research, industry, energy, education, cybersecurity and public governance.
AI Factories represent a fundamental tool, but not sufficient on their own. Stable investments, common rules, the ability to attract talent and strong cooperation between European, national and regional levels are needed.
In this scenario, Emilia-Romagna demonstrates how territories can become protagonists of the European strategy, transforming EU policies into concrete opportunities for economic development and innovation.
The final message of the event was clear. Digital sovereignty is not built only through regulation, but through real infrastructures, widespread skills and strong territorial alliances. Europe has started this path. The challenge now is to maintain its pace and turn it into lasting leadership.