Slovenian AI Factory

The Slovenian AI Factory will provide comprehensive AI and supercomputing solutions for research, public administration and business, bolstering innovation and European digital sovereignty.

SLAIF is an AI factory: an environment dedicated to design, test, and deploy solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning using access to supercomputing, large curated datasets, specialized talent and networks within the wider EuroHPC eco-system. Our mission is to accelerate collaboration among companies, universities, research organizations and public partners in order to provide efficient, innovative and independent or sovereign solutions in AI and ML technologies.

Our Tasks:

Develop a unified platform for AI access.
Accelerate innovation through research-industry collaboration.
Support AI talent through training, incubators and co-working spaces.
Push AI for Science to maximize the effect of existing expertise.
Support AI in green transition, renewable energy, health, biotechnology, digital society, transformation of public sector and interdisciplinary applications to support our national development strategy.
Integrate with the EuroHPC eco-system and provide a wide network of experts and access to new European infrastructures and technologies.

Get Access: EuroHPC | SLING | NCC

Focus Areas

AI for Green Transition

AI-powered solutions will optimize agriculture, environmental monitoring, energy systems, and smart manufacturing for sustainability.

AI-driven precision farming integrates satellite data, UAVs, and sensors for crop monitoring, yield prediction, and optimized irrigation. AI-powered logistics reduce food waste, while decision-support tools improve sustainability.

AI models process Earth observation data for real-time monitoring of water quality, biodiversity, land use, and natural disasters. Geospatial AI enhances disaster prediction and urban planning, while radar and multi-spectral data improve climate change tracking.

AI optimizes renewable energy integration into smart grids. Reinforcement learning enhances energy storage, demand balancing, and grid stability, while predictive maintenance ensures efficiency.

AI-based anomaly detection, generative AI, and digital twins enhance production efficiency, reduce waste, and support circular economy goals through advanced tracking, recycling, and up-cycling solutions.

AI for Science

AI-accelerated scientific discovery across materials science, life sciences, medicine, environmental modelling, and large-scale simulation, tightly integrated with high-performance computing and open science infrastructures.

Explainable AI systems and symbolic regression techniques automate the discovery and validation of scientific models and help uncover complex relationships, enhance predictive accuracy.

AI-driven analyses to accelerate drug discovery, virtual screening, and personalized medicine with HPC powered high-throughput simulations to optimize treatments and automated imaging analysis for advanced diagnostics.

Combining machine learning and HPC capabilities to facilitate discovery of new materials for energy storage, catalysis, and sustainable manufacturing and foster predictive modelling and material development.

Climate impact assessments, renewable energy integration, and ecosystem preservation with geospatial AI and physics-informed models for land use planning, disaster response, biodiversity conservation, and climate resilience.

Large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs) for research in linguistics, historiography, law, journalism etc. supporting semantic analysis, cultural evolution studies and research in many complex social phenomena.

AI and HPC is driving advancements in fields such as astrophysics, computational chemistry, and engineering; and enabling breakthroughs in physical system modelling and innovative technologies and infrastructures while enabling working with very large-scale datasets.

AI for Health & Biotechnology

AI will transform diagnostics, personalized medicine, and drug discovery, enhancing efficiency and accessibility in healthcare.

AI analyzes biosignals (ECGs, EEGs) and medical imaging (MRI, CT scans) to detect early signs of diseases. Multi-modal AI integrates patient data for personalized and explainable diagnostics.

AI-driven models use genomic and clinical data to tailor treatments, provide lifestyle recommendations, and improve chronic disease management.

HPC-enabled AI accelerates pharmaceutical research by predicting drug activity, toxicity, and synthesis, reducing costs and improving targeted treatments for rare diseases.

AI-powered simulations optimize medical decision-making and enhance healthcare innovation.

AI for Digital Society

AI technologies will enhance language processing, media, public services, and education, ensuring inclusivity and digital transformation.

AI will develop LLMs for Slovene and under-resourced languages, enabling automated document anonymisation, machine translation, and speech recognition for improved accessibility.

AI-assisted storytelling, bias detection, misinformation prevention, and journalist assistants will enhance content creation and media integrity.

AI-powered semantic analysis, chatbots, and policy insights will improve governance, citizen engagement, and public service accessibility.

AI will enable personalized tutoring, automated grading, and adaptive learning platforms, fostering innovation in education and professional development.

Services

User Support

The AI factory will guide users from the beginning to the completion of their project. We will offer co-working spaces and regional on-boarding.

AI Products

SLAIF will develop specific ready-to-deploy models in key areas, such as energy grid optimization or crop prediction, to address the four verticals.

AI Development and Deployment

Users access AI and ML services for model development, fine-tuning, AutoML, and AIOps with quality assurance, supported by consulting in data acquisition, model selection, training, evaluation, HPC deployment, inference, optimization, and proof-of-concepts.

Infrastructure and Data-Related Services

We offer integrated infrastructure and data services, including hardware and middleware support, data acquisition and secure data connectors. SLAIF will enable seamless data integration, reliable data flows, and optimized system performance across diverse platforms and environments.

AI Trainings

SLAIF will nurture a new generation of AI experts through new university-level courses, as well as targeted skill-enhancing workshops for companies and public administrators.

Training & User Support

SLAIF guides users from project inception to completion and nurtures new AI talent through university courses and targeted workshops.

A customized set of training programmes that address the needs of diverse users, including students, professionals, and SMEs, targeted at developing AI and HPC talent and fostering SME engagement by creating accessible learning pathways and equipping businesses with the necessary skills to adopt AI technologies.

Trainings are integrated with onboarding activities to support new users in effectively integrating AI into their workflows and coordinated with existing trainings of the National Competence Centre for HPC. Regional hubs in Ljubljana, Maribor, and Novo Mesto will serve as central points for onboarding new users into AI and HPC systems.

Different forms of AI training are offered as lectures, webinars, workshops, consultations, summer schools, and modular certification programmes to support skills development at any stage: fast-track options for beginners, in-depth modules for advanced learners and sector-specific training to accelerate AI skill uptake.

EuroHPC Ecosystem

SLING

The Slovenian National Supercomputing Network (SLING) is a consortium of partners dedicated to advancing supercomputing, networked and distributed computing, and high-performance computing systems for research in science, education, business, and public administration in Slovenia. The consortium is led by Arnes, which represents Slovenia on behalf of SLING in European and global organizations and supports the consortium's activities.

Services: SLING with its members develops and maintains services and infrastructures in supercomputing or HPC (high performance computing), data management services and modern service managers, such as batch management (SLURM), service management (Kubernetes) and workflow management services.
NCC: SLING supports establishment of knowledge centres, such as the National Competence Centre for HPC (funded as part of EUROCC EuroHPC projects), centres of excellence and, recently, the national AI Factory project.
SLING service providers operate and support large supercomputing and data hardware infrastructures that are made available through SLING common access. Currently they are IZUM (EuroHPC Vega), Arnes (with HPC Arnes), JSI (NSC and others), FIŠ (Trdina). In the scope of the SLAIF project, a large future AI enabled system will be established: AI:HPC

EuroHPC

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking allows the European Union and the EuroHPC JU participating countries to coordinate their efforts and pool their resources to help invest and support the European initiative in supercomputing, AI and quantum technologies. This boosts Europe's scientific excellence and industrial strength and supports the digital transformation of its economy while ensuring its technological sovereignty. EuroHPC JU supports investment in infrastructure, but also common initiatives and projects, such as:

EPICURE: Project that is investing in development of advanced user support by establishing and operating a distributed but coordinated European HPC application support service and encourage the best possible uptake of the systems by European researchers.
MINERVA: A precursor to AI Factories, is a transformative hub that bridges advanced High-Performance Computing with artificial intelligence communities across Europe in order to accelerate AI research and development by making cutting-edge HPC infrastructure accessible to ML/AI researchers and developers.
Centres of Excellence: Specialised projects dedicated to advancing High-Performance Computing (HPC) across key scientific and industrial domains in Europe. They bring together leading experts, cutting-edge infrastructure, and targeted research to address complex challenges in areas such as climate modelling, materials science, engineering, or digital twins. EuroHPC supports community centres, transversal centres for infrastructure support and lighthouse centres for new core applications.
Integration with other EU initiatives: With a number of its infrastructural initiatives, such as EuroHPC Federation and Hyperconnectivity projects, EuroHPC is connecting with other EU initiatives, such as Common European Data Spaces, ESFRI infrastructures, (i.e. CLARIN and ELIXIR in Slovenia) EOSC and EGI.

EuroHPC AI Initiative

EU: the AI Continent: The European Union's AI Factories initiative is a cornerstone of its broader AI Continent Action Plan that allowed the Union to utilise its existing capital-intensive initiative to address the acceleration in the global artificial intelligence development and make publicly-funded assets and knowledge centres directly accessible to the commercial AI sector, particularly startups and SMEs, creating a number of "one-stop shops" that are intended to be lean and efficient while building on existing wide federated infrastructures.
AI enabled supercomputers are mandated in the current generation of EuroHPC investment in order to ensure that AI capabilities and HPC infrastructure together provide the maximum benefit and allow researchers and industrial partners to gain access to the most advanced capabilities in EuroHPC hosting entities.
AI Factories and Antennas: AI Factories are dynamic ecosystems that will build around AI-optimised supercomputers, offering computing resources and support services to the European industry, as well as to the European scientific users for the development of large AI models to take advantage of AI technology capabilities in the European Union, and for the development of skills and knowledge in the domain of AI. AI Factory Antennas complement existing AI Factories by expanding the reach and complementing their services while connecting partner countries and industrial areas to existing infrastructures.
DataSpaces and DataLabs: Common European Data Spaces have been created to help unleash the enormous potential of data-driven innovation. Their task is to allow data from across the EU to be made available and exchanged in a trustworthy and secure manner. In order for this data to become available and operational, shaped in suitable formats and prepared for critical workflows, AI Factories are establishing Data Labs, internal task forces that integrate their facilities with different domains' Data Spaces.
AI GigaFactories are large-scale facilities dedicated to the development and training of next-generation AI models containing trillions of parameters. Advanced large-scale facilities with sufficient capacity to handle the complete lifecycle of very large AI models and applications, from development to large-scale inference, are planned as a common development and investment strategy joining European Commission, member states and large industrial initiatives in Europe.

Frequently Asked Questions

In the bid for European digital sovereignty, 19 AI Factories have been founded, as well as 13 AI Antennas. AI Factories intend to mobilise the existing supercomputing capabilities for training trustworthy AI models. The Slovenian AI Factory is part of this ecosystem.

SLAIF: Slovenian AI Factory has been selected for funding at EUROHPC-2024-CEI-AI-02 call for the selection of Hosting Entities for acquiring or upgrading EuroHPC systems with AI capabilities and establishment of associated AI Factories. The proposal includes two distinct consortia:

IZUM, as the Hosting Entity hosting Slovenian EuroHPC system Vega, has been selected, in a consortium with ARNES and JSI, to host and operate a new AI-optimised supercomputer. The new AI-optimized HPC system, co-funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, and EuroHPC under Digital Europe Programme, will be procured under the direction of EuroHPC. It is expected to be put in production in late 2027 and will be located in the new Arnes Data Centre in Maribor.

The second project is a three year Horizon Europe project, co-funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, intending to establish an associated AI factory by a larger consortium consisting of technical partners (IZUM as the administrative lead, JSI as technical lead and ARNES as network and infrastructure partner), centres of knowledge (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Computing and Informatics, University of Ljubljana, University of Nova Gorica, University of Primorska, Faculty of Information Studies Novo mesto) and industrial liaison partners (Chamber of Commerce and Technology Park Ljubljana).

SLAIF aims to build an environment that will provide a complete environment to design, test, and deploy solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning based on provided infrastructure including supercomputing facilities, large curated datasets, specialized talent and networks within the wider EuroHPC eco-system. The goal of this effort is to accelerate collaboration among companies, universities, research organizations and public partners in order to build efficient, innovative and independent or sovereign solutions in AI and ML technologies.

Within our AI for Science pillar, we want to combine extensive expertise of our knowledge centres with innovation in our industrial community and accelerate the potential within the region whereas in the other pillars we want to provide the support our existing strategies need to fully exploit potential offered by AI and related technologies.

The current portfolio will be listed on the web site. For inquiries, you can contact us: support@slaif.si.

Please note complementary services can be provided within related projects, such as SLING EuroHPC NCC and the national Competence centre for AI. Write to support@sling.si to inquire on service availability and describe your requirements.

SLAIF services are available for researchers, public administrators, SMEs and start-up companies. While the location of operations is in Slovenia, SLAIF is tied into the broader European ecosystem, meaning that both Slovenian and European users can apply.

For large companies, our services are available, but are not free of charge.

Applications for the use of our services are available at the EuroHPC User Portal.

To account for the diversity of users, different types of access are on offer. Currently, the relevant call for AI Factory access are:

EuroHPC AI Factory for Science and Collaborative EU Projects
EuroHPC AI Factory Playground call (available for HPC Vega)
EuroHPC AI Factory Fast Lane call

For national access, see SLING Open Access Calls.

The majority of our services, including hardware access, are free of cost.

Some services for businesses, such as one-to-one consulting, specialized trainings and renting of computing capacity, are considered under the purview of a de-minimis scheme.

Hardware access and one-on-one consulting is available also as a commercial service. EuroHPC Vega provides current prices.