European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking
The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking is a public-private partnership in high-performance computing, enabling the pooling of European Union–level resources with the resources of participating EU member states and participating associated states of the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes, as well as private stakeholders. The Joint Undertaking has the twin stated aims of developing a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure, and supporting research and innovation activities. Located in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, the Joint Undertaking started operating in November 2018 under the control of the European Commission and became autonomous in 2020.
History
In June 2016, EU member state leaders, meeting in the European Council called for greater coordination of EU efforts on high-performance computing as part of the EU's wider Digital Single Market strategy. The European Declaration on High-Performance Computing was launched in Rome in March 2017, initially signed by seven EU member states committed to upgrading European computing power. In June 2018, the Council of the EU endorsed the European Commission’s proposal to establish the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. On 3 July 2018, the European Parliament voted in favour of the Commission’s proposal to create a European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking. The proposal was formally adopted by the Council of the European Union on 28 September 2018.The Executive Director was appointed on 15 May 2020 and the Joint Undertaking became autonomous from the European Commission on 23 September 2020.
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking was reviewed by means of Council Regulation 2021/1173.
Funding and objectives
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is jointly funded by its members with a budget of around €7 billion for the period 2021-2027.Most of this funding comes from the current EU long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework with a contribution of €3 billion, distributed as follows:
- €1,9 billion from the Digital Europe Programme to support the acquisition, deployment, upgrading and operation of the infrastructures, the federation of supercomputing services, and the widening of HPC usage and skills;
- €900 million from Horizon Europe to support research and innovation activities for developing a world-class, competitive and innovative supercomputing ecosystem across Europe;
- €200 million from Connecting Europe Facility to improve the interconnection of HPC, quantum computing, and data resources, as well as the interconnection with the Union’s common European data spaces and secure cloud infrastructures.
The Joint Undertaking provides financial support in the form of procurement or research and innovation grants to participants following open and competitive calls.
The EuroHPC JU has the twin objectives of;
- developing a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure: buying and deploying in the EU at least two supercomputers that will be among the top 5 in the world and at least two other that would today rank in the global top 25 for Europe's private and public users scientific and industrial users, for use in more than 800 scientific and industrial application fields;
- supporting research and innovation activities: developing a European supercomputing ecosystem, stimulating a technology supply industry, and making supercomputing resources in many application areas available to a large number of public and private users, including small and medium-sized enterprises.
AI Factories and InvestAI
Standard facilities
In December 2024, EuroHPC selected 7 locations for the construction of new data centers for artificial intelligence infrastructure.On February 11, 2025, during the AI Action Summit, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the InvestAI initiative with a budget of €200 billion, including the announcement of a €20 billion fund for the construction of data centers, although claims questioning the scale of the promises have surfaced. The initiative was announced 3 weeks after the announcement of the Stargate project by the President of the United States.
As part of the InvestAI initiative:
- The EU AI Champions initiative was announced, bringing together over 60 European companies that have committed to allocate €150 billion to AI investments;
- The EU committed to allocate €50 billion to support the initiative.
Gigafactories
The fund plans to build up to 5 large data centers, referred to as "AI gigafactories," with a minimum of 100,000 GPUs in each location.Supercomputers
In June 2019, the EuroHPC JU governing board selected 8 sites for supercomputing centres located in 8 different EU member states to host the new high-performance computing machines. The hosting sites will be located in Sofia, Ostrava, Kajaani, Bologna, Bissen, Minho, Maribor, and Barcelona. 3 of the 8 sites will host precursor to exascale machines that will be in the global top 5 supercomputers, and 5 petascale machines.In 2022, the EuroHPC governing board selected a further 5 sites to host a new fleet of EuroHPC supercomputers, including the first European exascale supercomputer to be located in Germany.
Currently operating supercomputers procured by EuroHPC JU include:
| No | Name | Location | Start date | Sustained performance | Peak performance | GPU type | GPU number |
| 1 | Jupiter | Jülich, Germany | 2025 | 1,000.00 | 1,226.28 | Nvidia GH200 | 23,536 |
| 2 | Lumi | Kajaani, Finland | 2022 | 386.00 | 539.13 | AMD Radeon MI250X | 11,912 |
| 3 | Leonardo | Bologna, Italy | 2022 | 249.04 | 315.74 | Nvidia A100 SXM4 64GB | 13,824 |
| 4 | MareNostrum 5 | Barcelona, Spain | 2023 | 215.40 | 314 | Nvidia H100 64GB HBM2e memory | 4,480 |
| 5 | MeluXina | Bissen, Luxemburg | 2022 | 12.81 | 18.29 | Nvidia A100-40 | 800 |
| 6 | Karolina | Ostrava, Czech Republic | 2021 | 9.59 | 12.91 | Nvidia A100-40 | 576 |
| 7 | Discoverer | Sofia, Bulgaria | 2021 | 4.52 | 5.94 | Nvidia H200 | 32 |
| 8 | Vega | Maribor, Slovenia | 2021 | 6.92 | 10.05 | Nvidia A100-40 | 244 |
| 9 | Deucalion | Guimarães, Portugal | 2023 | 7.48 | 9.76 | Nvidia A100-40/80 | 132 |