Google's ultra-private CEO Sundar Pichai is showing me around Googleplex, its California headquarters. A walkway runs along the length of it, passing by a giant dinosaur skeleton, a beach volleyball pitch and dozens of Googlers lunching under the hazy November sun. But it's a laboratory, hidden away at the back of the campus behind some trees, that he is most excited to show me. This is where the invention that Google believes is its secret weapon is being developed. Known as a Tensor Processing Unit (or TPU), it looks like an unassuming little chip but, says Mr Pichai, it will one day power every AI query that goes through Google.

The strategic importance of artificial intelligence is driving a global push toward Sovereign AI initiatives. Nationwide governments are increasingly developing dedicated infrastructures, called AI Factories (AIF), to achieve technological autonomy and secure the resources necessary to sustain robust local digital ecosystems. In Europe, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is investing hundreds of millions of euros into several AI Factories, built atop existing high-performance computing (HPC) supercomputers. However, while HPC systems excel in raw performance, they are not inherently designed for usability, accessibility, or serving as public-facing platforms for AI services such as inference or agentic applications. In contrast, AI practitioners are accustomed to cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes and object storage, tools that are often difficult to integrate within traditional HPC environments. This article advocates for a dual-stack approach within supercomputers: integrating both HPC and cloud-native technologies. Our goal is to bridge the divide between HPC and cloud computing by combining high performance and hardware acceleration with ease of use and service-oriented front-ends. This convergence allows each paradigm to amplify the other. To this end, we will study the cloud challenges of HPC (Serverless HPC) and the HPC challenges of cloud technologies (High-performance Cloud).

The EU has revealed details of a 20bn ( 17bn) plan to create new sites equipped with vast supercomputers in Europe to develop the next generation of artificial intelligence models, while opening the door to amending its landmark law that regulates the technology. Publishing a strategy to turn Europe into an "AI continent", the European Commission vice-president Henna Virkkunen said the technology was at the heart of making Europe more competitive, secure and technologically sovereign, adding: "The global race for AI is far from over." The EU is attempting to catch up with the US and China, which have taken a lead in pioneering the technology that increasingly powers shopping websites and self-driving cars, generates text, and is predicted to play a transformative role in healthcare, security and defence, and advanced manufacturing, among other sectors. The US has a commanding lead in AI, far ahead of China. A report from Stanford University this week said 40 "notable AI models" – meaning influential – were produced by institutions in the US in 2024, compared with 15 in China and three in Europe (all French).

So Nvidia claims for its AI accelerating hardware in terms of the performance boost it has delivered over the last decade and will deliver again over the next 10 years. The result, if Nvidia is correct, will be a new industry of AI factories across the world and gigantic breakthroughs in AI processing power. It also means, ostensibly, AI models one million times more powerful than existing examples, including ChatGPT, in AI processing terms at least. In Nvidia's earnings call yesterday (opens in new tab), CEO Jensen Huang claimed that Nvidia's GPUs had boosted AI processing performance by a factor of no less than one million in the last 10 years. "Moore's Law, in its best days, would have delivered 100x in a decade," Huang explained.

In today's world, technology leads business and these are not just any tech but specifically AI and other disruptive systems. We have witnessed how the pandemic accelerated the rapid growth and adoption of these cutting-edge technologies. According to Reportlinker research, the global AI market is projected to grow by USD 76.44 billion during 2021-2025, at a CAGR of 21%. Artificial intelligence has revolutionized businesses and industries by introducing automation and intelligent business operations. Many giant firms are leading the AI race and competing consistently to enhance their markets.

On many occasions, the greatest impediments to creating Artificial Intelligence solutions do not lie in the capacity of highly qualified teams, but in establishing an effective way of working between the different professional profiles involved in the life cycle of analytical models. This is one of the main tasks we are currently tackling at BBVA AI Factory. It is a task guided by three concepts: simplify, accelerate and reuse. My first direct contact with the AI Factory was in April 2020, in the middle of lockdown. I found myself with a team of data scientists who were extremely competent in creating AI models, but who needed to continue to push for common working guidelines in order to deal with the complexity – both organisational and technical – that exists in the Engineering domain.

Should you follow the information on artificial intelligence, you will discover two diverging threads. The press and theatre often portray AI using human capacities, mass unemployment, and also a potential robot apocalypse. Scientific conventions, on the other hand, talk progress toward artificial general intelligence when acknowledging that present AI is feeble and not capable of lots of the fundamental elements of the human mind. But no matter where they stand compared to human intellect, now's AI algorithms have become a defining element for several businesses, such as healthcare, finance, production, transport, and a lot more. And quite soon"no area of human endeavor will Stay independent of artificial intelligence," as Harvard Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani describe in their publication Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World.

If you follow the news on artificial intelligence, you'll find two diverging threads. The media and cinema often portray AI with human-like capabilities, mass unemployment, and a possible robot apocalypse. Scientific conferences, on the other hand, discuss progress toward artificial general intelligence while acknowledging that current AI is weak and incapable of many of the basic functions of the human mind. But regardless of where they stand in comparison to human intelligence, today's AI algorithms have already become a defining component for many sectors, including health care, finance, manufacturing, transportation, and many more. And very soon "no field of human endeavor will remain independent of artificial intelligence," as Harvard Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani explain in their book Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World.

Deepfakes are synthetic media, usually videos, created with deep learning technology. By manipulating images, videos, and voices of real people, a deepfake can portray someone doing things they never did, or saying things they never said. By feeding a machine learning model thousands of target images, a deepfake algorithm can learn the details of a person's face. With enough training data, the algorithm can then predict what that person's face would look like when mimicking the expressions of someone else. A similar process is used for training deepfake algorithms to mimic the accent, intonation, and tone of a person's voice.

To accelerate the Agrifood industry transformation using A.I., Danone and Microsoft are launching together the AI Factory for Agrifood - a 3 months accelerator program for innovative AI based solutions. Created by Microsoft in partnership with the Inria laboratory, the AI Factory program unites a community of startups dedicated to the development of innovative solutions based on Artificial Intelligence. At Danone, our vision is that the health of people and the health of the planet are interconnected. This program is a call for entrepreneurs and innovators to join the food revolution and build together a more sustainable food system. If you want to join this community and benefit from Microsoft and Danone expertise, please fill out this application form and make sure to complete the requested information accurately.