20 Oktober 2026
The JUPITER AI Factory (JAIF) with its exascale supercomputing capabilities offers unique opportunities for training AI models in Europe. It provides free, fast and easy access to compute time for start-ups and SMEs as well as access for scientists and industry. Through collaboration with the NVIDIA Inception programme for startups, JAIF is now expanding its infrastructure and range of services.
JAIF is built around JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer. By collaborating with NVIDIA Inception - which similarly provides startups with access to developer tools, training, and a network of investors and technical experts - JAIF directly embeds its massive computational power into a broader, fast-growing innovation ecosystem, further strengthening its visibility among startups and SMEs in the German and European AI landscape.
The collaboration complements JAIF's existing partnerships and expands the range of open, vendor-neutral access to European AI and HPC resources.
Knowledge transfer and skills development for AI and HPC
The entire JAIF research and developer community, comprising academia, startups and SMEs, will also benefit from the collaboration. As part of the planned initiatives, targeted training and mentoring activities will be offered through programmes from NVIDIA Training for developers and administrators, the NVIDIA AI Technology Center, and the Open Hackathon initiative. These activities aim to strengthen knowledge exchange and build practical skills for developing AI and HPC applications.
Furthermore, the collaboration will increase the visibility of JAIF's computing resources and services. This enables startups and SMEs to access large-scale, state-of-the-art AI infrastructure through JAIF's primary application channels, complemented by the NVIDIA Inception portal as a streamlined gateway. This combination will attract new user groups to the JAIF ecosystem and strengthen the uptake of existing service offerings. Integrating these programmes provide JAIF users with complementary transfer and domain expertise, supporting the effective use of modern accelerated computing resources. By connecting a broader innovation ecosystem with European AI and HPC resources, the initiative aims to promote the adoption and scaling of AI applications across fields - including healthcare, energy, manufacturing, climate and environment, education, culture and media, as well as the public sector, finance and insurance.
JUPITER - key infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing
hese offerings complement the expertise of JAIF's German and European partners and are also integrated into a broader, vendor‑neutral service landscape. At the same time, they will advance AI innovation in the context of Europe's first exascale supercomputer, JUPITER. Inaugurated in September 2025, the EuroHPC system is powered by around 24,000 NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchips and forms the central technological backbone of the JAIF ecosystem. JUPITER represents a key infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing in Germany and Europe. To seamlessly bridge foundation training with real-world applications, the ecosystem also features JARVIS, a dedicated cloud platform tailored for advanced AI inference and scalable user services.
Long-standing collaboration in high-performance computing and GPU-accelerated research
The JSC has maintained a close technical collaboration with NVIDIA for many years in the fields of high-performance computing and GPU-accelerated research. This includes development and optimisation work for AI and HPC applications, as well as the operation of research and development laboratories, including an NVIDIA Application Lab at the Jülich site.
The collaboration contributes to strengthen JAIF as one of Germany's leading AI innovation hubs and supports economic development in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Germany, and Europe.
JAIF's goal of offering services that bring startups and SMEs closer to large-scale AI applications is strongly supported by our collaboration with NVIDIA and its Inception Programme. This partnership ensures that JUPITER's strengths on one side and JARVIS's flexibility on the other can be harnessed to their fullest potential.
"Germany's research institutions are producing founders who want to train their own models, and that ambition runs into infrastructure limits early," said Tobias Halloran, director of EMEAI startups at NVIDIA. "Through this collaboration, startups and SMEs in the NVIDIA Inception programme will also be able to access JUPITER for training and JARVIS for inference through JAIF, along with expert support to use them. This further expands JAIF's user base among startups and SMEs."
About the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)
The Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) operates high-performance computing systems and provides access to leading supercomputing infrastructure for science and industry in Germany and Europe. As one of Europe's leading supercomputing centres, JSC enables researchers to address complex scientific and societal challenges using advanced simulation, data science, and artificial intelligence methods. Through its systems - including Europe's first exascale supercomputer JUPITER - JSC supports interdisciplinary research across a wide range of scientific domains and develops methods for next-generation computing infrastructures. JSC also operates JUNIQ, a European quantum computing infrastructure that provides access to state-of-the-art quantum computers and supports the early exploration and adoption of quantum computing technologies. JSC is part of Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), a member of the Helmholtz Association.
About the JUPITER AI Factory (JAIF)
The JUPITER AI Factory (JAIF) is part of a network of AI Factories across Europe co-funded by EuroHPC JU. As part of this initiative, EuroHPC JU is overseeing the deployment of 19 AI Factories, complemented by 13 AI Factory Antennas, to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence in startups, SMEs, industry, research, and the public sector. Built around JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer, owned by EuroHPC and operated by the JSC, JAIF provides access to advanced AI infrastructure for training and inference, expert support, training, and innovation services that help organisations develop, scale, and deploy AI solutions. As a one-stop shop for AI innovation, JAIF supports applications across sectors including healthcare, energy, climate, manufacturing, finance, education, media, and the public sector.
The JUPITER AI Factory is coordinated by FZJ and brings together RWTH Aachen University, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT), Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS), hessian.AI, and AI Factory Antennas in Belgium and Hungary to support AI innovation and adoption across Europe.
Funding
JAIF is funded through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU), with co-funding from the German federal government and the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, representing a total investment of €25 million in the AI Factory. In addition, the JARVIS AI inference system associated with JAIF is funded with €30 million by the German federal government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
JUPITER is funded jointly, with half of its funding being provided by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), a quarter coming from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR, formerly BMBF), and a quarter from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKW NRW).
