The government of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) has welcomed a proposal to set up an artificial intelligence centre known as an AI gigafactory in Finland. On Friday, it formally announced its backing for a plan by a business consortium led by Nokia. The group seeks to land a contract from the European Commission as part of a scheme to establish five AI gigafactories around the EU.
The Espoo-based Nokia is Europe’s largest network manufacturing company.
Orpo suggested in June that the gigafactory could be built alongside the Lumi supercomputer in Kajaani. It began operations in mid-2022 and the following year became Europe’s fastest supercomputer.
The European Commission’s InvestAI initiative is targeting 200 billion euros’ worth of investments in AI and high-performance computing (HPC), including a huge push for AI infrastructure. The petascale supercomputer Lumi is partly funded by the Union’s EuroHPC Joint undertaking.
Nokia has taken part in the Commission’s call and stepped forward with an expression of interest to bring such a facility to Finland. The proposed factories would have four times the computing power of current AI centres.
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According to Henna Virkkunen (NCP), European Commission Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, the EU's approach to the project is mainly market-based.
“Now is the right time to influence the development of the European artificial intelligence infrastructure,” she said in a statement last month.
About two-thirds of the investment costs and all operational costs are to be covered by the private sector.
In a statement on Friday, the government said that such a factory would be in line with its objective to generate sustainable growth and investment in Finland.
"Finland’s strengths in expertise, data resources, startups, research and development, and technologies, such as quantum, make it well-positioned to lead in AI," it said.
The government bills Finland as "an ideal location for an AI gigafactory, largely due to clean energy grids and land availability".
Meanwhile Nokia touts its own expertise in major international tech ventures.
"Nokia’s strong expertise and experience in data centre network solutions gives us an excellent foundation to bring the right partners together to move this initiative forward," the company’s Chief Geopolitical and Government Relations Officer, Mikko Hautala, said in a press release.
The Commission is beginning talks with the 76 applicants who have submitted expressions of interest before launching the full call for proposals this autumn.
