The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking signed a procurement contract on August 31, 2026, with Bull to install a new AI-optimized supercomputer in Kajaani, Finland. The machine will sit in the CSC - IT Center for Science data center and power the LUMI AI Factory. EuroHPC called it the sixth AI Factory procurement it has signed for a next-generation AI system.

The host consortium includes Finland, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Poland. EuroHPC said the system will run next-generation AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs and 6th Gen AMD EPYC 256-core processors. It expects about a tenfold increase in AI capacity compared with the current LUMI supercomputer. Users are supposed to get access in 2027.

The acquisition, delivery, installation, and maintenance budget is 387.8 million euros. EuroHPC will fund half from the Digital Europe Programme. The LUMI AI Factory consortium will fund the other half. Resources will be allocated jointly by EuroHPC and the consortium, in line with those shares. Finland won the hosting site in December 2024. Bull won the tender launched in May 2025.

A factory that is already running

The LUMI AI Factory has been offering AI compute to European small and mid-size companies and startups since April 2025, using the existing LUMI machine. Named sectors include manufacturing, health and life sciences, and communications. Climate research, materials science, and language technology are also in scope. The new box is meant to widen that service, with startups and SMEs as the primary audience and the wider research community still able to apply.

A companion quantum system, LUMI-IQ, is planned as an experimental platform that ties HPC and AI work to emerging quantum hardware. EuroHPC said it is now overseeing 19 AI Factories, plus 13 AI Factory Antennas selected in October 2025. At the end of July 2026 it opened a separate call for future AI Gigafactories.

“With LUMI-AI, EuroHPC JU has now signed its sixth AI Factory procurement contract for a next-generation AI-optimised supercomputer. Together, these systems will form a powerful European AI infrastructure ecosystem, enabling SMEs and startups to access world-class supercomputing resources.” Anders Jensen, executive director, EuroHPC JU

“LUMI-AI’s modern capabilities combined with the LUMI-IQ quantum computer will help European researchers and industry tackle unforeseen research and innovation challenges in key fields such as health, climate and disruptive technologies.” Kimmo Koski, managing director, CSC - IT Center for Science

Decoded Take

Europe keeps buying AI factories the way it once bought research supercomputers: a public tender, a host consortium, and a vendor that can deliver a named GPU. LUMI-AI is that model with a 2027 power-on date and an AMD rack instead of another NVIDIA slide. The tenfold capacity claim is a planning number until the machine is installed and allocated. Watch whether SME access is real (hours granted, jobs completed) or a brochure for the Gigafactory call, and whether MI430X software is ready when the hall is. A factory that SMEs cannot book is a national monument. A factory that runs confidential industrial jobs in Kajaani is a policy that worked.