Spain is set to invest £50.9 million (€61.76 million) into an artificial intelligence factory in Barcelona, as announced by the European Commission.

It's one of seven to be launched throughout Europe, which will act as "interconnected ecosystems" to promote innovation, collaboration and development in AI in Europe.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS) could "democratise access" to AI so that businesses of all sizes can take advantage of its resources. 

Minister for Digital Transformation and the Public Service Óscar López said: "The Government is betting heavily on Spain being at the forefront of AI innovation, generating a powerful ecosystem of startups and companies around these new technologies.

"The development of AI requires a great computing capacity, which currently only large platforms offer, at a high cost, which not all can afford. That is why it is necessary to democratize access to innovation in AI, as we will achieve with AI factories." 

The factory will promote AI use in areas such as health, finance and public services, and it will act as an experimentation platform, so companies can test their AI innovations before they go to market.

It will update the Marenostrum 5 supercomputer, which already has a peak performance of 314 Petaflops, or 314 million billion calculations per second, through the acquisition of a new specific cluster for AI training.

This programme is aligned with the Europe strategy and the Draghi report, which plans to improve control over data and security, ensuring trustworthy AI models.

In addition to funding from  Spanish Government, through the ministries of Science, Innovation and Universities, and for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, there are several funding sources. 

It's expected the Generalitat de Catalunya will contribute €14 million, and countries such as Portugal, Turkey and Romania will make contributions up to €98.86 million.

The EUROHPC JU, the institution that channels the initiative of the IA Factories, may also contribute €98.33 million.

The factory's official name will be Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (Barcelona Supercomputing Centre - National Centre of Supercomputing).