EuroHPC JU Awards Contract to Consortium for MareNostrum 5 AI Enhancement
January 30, 2026
The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has taken a significant step to bolster Europe's capabilities in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. The organization has signed a contract for a major AI-focused upgrade to the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, located at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain. This move underscores the strategic importance of developing sovereign, cutting-edge computing infrastructure to support scientific research and industrial innovation across the continent. The contract was awarded to a consortium led by Fsas Technologies, the HPC and AI division of Fujitsu, and Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica. The project, valued at approximately €1.29 million ($1.5 million), is co-financed equally by the EuroHPC JU and the national governments of Spain, Portugal, and Türkiye. The consortium is tasked with installing two new specialized computing partitions in the first half of 2026. One partition will be dedicated to training large language models (LLMs), while the other will be optimized for AI inference tasks. The technical upgrade will integrate "next-generation GPUs" and high-speed interconnects to power these new capabilities. To handle the immense data requirements of AI workloads, the project also includes a substantial expansion of storage capacity, featuring a new high-performance, AI-oriented file system. Key technology providers for the upgrade include Supermicro and Nvidia on the compute side, with IBM and Vast contributing to the storage architecture. The MareNostrum 5 system, a 314-petaflop machine that debuted in December 2023 and currently ranks 14th on the Top500 list, will see its capabilities significantly expanded beyond its existing Bull Sequana and Lenovo-based architecture with Intel and Nvidia components. This AI upgrade is a clear signal of Europe's commitment to maintaining a competitive edge in high-performance computing. By enhancing one of its flagship supercomputers specifically for AI, the EuroHPC JU aims to provide European researchers and companies with a powerful, locally-controlled platform for developing foundational AI models and applications, reducing reliance on non-European infrastructure for critical computational work. Source: datacenterdynamics
