AI pioneer Jakob Uszkoreit plans to spearhead the creation of a European artificial intelligence by organizing a dedicated team. To achieve this ambitious goal, he estimates that 50 billion Euros will be required. This substantial funding would primarily cover the purchase of rapidly accessible data centers in the short term, and later, the development of owned infrastructure.
Speaking to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”, Uszkoreit emphasized that he is not working alone, noting that while he has begun assembling the necessary team, the financial resources are lacking. His expertise is rooted in a significant contribution to the groundwork of modern artificial intelligence back in 2017. He is also the son of Hans Uszkoreit, one of Germany’s most highly regarded AI researchers.
Uszkoreit stressed that the crucial next step relies on whether Germany and the European Union are prepared to take major foundational action. The immediate need for this money is to secure computing power, starting with market purchases, before shifting to proprietary locations-such as those drawing power from French nuclear plants near the German-French border or in Norway.
In parallel, Rafael Laguna de la Vera, the head of the Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovations, is also advocating for prompt action. The agency held a competition aimed at building novel AI solutions, attracting more than 500 participating teams. According to FAS reports, Laguna contacted several federal ministers in a letter, campaigning for additional funds to help support these numerous innovative teams.
