Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI, and České Radiokomunikace have signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding to combine their complementary expertise and develop a sovereign AI offering designed to accelerate AI adoption across the Czech Republic and Central and Eastern Europe. The partnership is the first industrial agreement announced in the context of the bilateral strategic cooperation agreement on AI and digital technology signed by France and the Czech Republic.
Bull and České Radiokomunikace have signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding to develop a sovereign AI offering.
The partnership strengthens the consortium led by CRA in its candidacy under the European AI Gigafactories programme.
The Czech AI Gigafactory initiative is open to companies from nine CEE countries under the Prague declaration.
Bull brings end-to-end AI capabilities through its DataSentics AI engineers in the Czech Republic and its BullSequana AI platform.
European supply chain manufacturing capabilities in the Czech Republic and France, in partnership with Foxconn, could enable local manufacturing of the Gigafactory's computing servers.
Bull intends to reserve Gigafactory capacity for its own clients, positioning itself as both technology provider and future user.
"AI Gigafactories are where Bull's hardware, AI software and expertise in real-world AI applications come together. Joining the Czech consortium is an important step in our European AI strategy and further strengthens the Czech-French cooperation at its heart, building on the expertise of our 200 DataSentics AI engineers in Prague and Brno. It reflects the kind of AI we want to build in Europe: open, sustainable and sovereign to give organisations greater control over their technology and data," said Emmanuel Le Roux, CEO of Bull.
"Our ambition is to build an ecosystem in the Czech Republic that combines computing infrastructure with the development and practical use of artificial intelligence. The Memorandum of Understanding with Bull opens up opportunities for cooperation in both hardware and software—the two key components of an AI Gigafactory. We want international and Czech companies, public administrations and researchers to be able to develop their own AI solutions here, helping the Czech Republic become a major centre for artificial intelligence in Europe," said Miloš Mastník, CEO, CRA.
AI Gigafactories are intended to strengthen Europe's resilience and capacity to develop and deploy advanced AI at scale. They will provide the computing infrastructure, services and expertise required by companies, research organisations and public administrations, while helping Europe retain greater control over its data, technologies and strategic AI capabilities.
The Czech consortium aims to maximise the share of European technologies across its infrastructure and AI stack, combining infrastructure located and operated in Central and Eastern Europe with European technology and local expertise.
Bull, together with its DataSentics AI engineers in the Czech Republic, brings end-to-end AI capabilities to the consortium, from infrastructure and software to deployment services and use cases implementation. Its European supply chain manufacturing capabilities in the Czech Republic and France, in partnership with Foxconn, could enable the consortium to manufacture the Gigafactory's computing servers to be built in both countries, with the ambition to integrate European chips as they become available.
To combine European technological sovereignty with more sustainable AI infrastructure, the consortium would also benefit from Bull's experience in energy efficient supercomputing, from Direct Liquid Cooling to workload-level energy monitoring, while the BullSequana AI platform routes routine tasks to right-sized open models, reducing both cost and energy consumption.
On the software side, the open-source-based BullSequana AI platform, jointly developed by teams in the Czech Republic and France, will enable organisations to develop and deploy AI applications using the Gigafactory's computing capacity and off-the-shelf use cases. This is complemented by more than 200 Bull DataSentics AI engineers in the Czech Republic, providing local expertise to public and private sector organisations across the region as they adopt sovereign AI and bring use cases into production.
About Bull
Leveraging nearly a century of innovations, Bull is a global leader for High-Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies with approximately €720 million in revenue and 3,000 professionals operating in 32 countries. Built on an open, end-to-end and trusted approach, Bull designs, deploys and operates hardware, software and strategic services that unlock enterprise value, accelerate scientific research and advance society. Driven by world-class R&D, backed by 1,600 patents, manufacturing excellence and data sciences expertise, Bull enables nations and industries to fully control their AI and data.
About CRA
České Radiokomunikace a.s. is a leading provider of digital infrastructure in the Czech Republic. In addition to broadcasting services, the company connects the worlds of television, radio and the internet. CRA operates eight data centres and its own fibre-optic backbone network, and already provides GPU computing capacity in the Czech Republic. As an established telecommunications company, CRA has extensive experience in operating critical infrastructure. As part of the European AI Gigafactory initiative, the company is developing the AIGF CZ project for Central and Eastern Europe.
