Fortissimo: call for proposal for SME
The FFplus project launched a new open call for European small and medium-sized enterprises. They are looking for agile innovative companies that decide to use supercomputers in practice and thus gain a competitive advantage on the market.
The FFplus project is already the fourth continuation of a very successful initiative that directly deals with how to help businesses overcome obstacles in the use of supercomputers and high-performance data analysis in practice or in the work and development of generative AI. The goal is primarily to strengthen the global competitiveness of European industry.
In the past years, dozens of companies from all over Europe that used supercomputers have successfully passed open challenges. Let their stories inspire you, you can find them on the FFplus website.
The FFplus project call is divided into 2 parts:
- BUSINESS EXPERIMENTS
The first part of this challenge is intended for businesses with no previous experience with supercomputing across all disciplines. As part of this challenge, companies have the opportunity to submit their "experiments", i.e. projects solving a specific business challenge with the help of supercomputer technologies, high-performance data analysis or artificial intelligence. Estimated duration of the experiment max. 15 months with a planned start on January 1, 2025.
A sum of EUR 4 million will be distributed among all the selected projects for the financing of experiments.
The deadline for submitting applications is September 4, 2024 at 5 p.m.
- INNOVATION STUDIES
The second part of the FFplus challenge will support companies and startups that are already active in the field of generative AI and that lack the necessary computing resources to develop their own models. The goal is to facilitate and strengthen the technological development of European companies in the field of AI.
Participating enterprises will be supported to increase their innovation potential by leveraging new generative UI models, such as large language models (LLM), based on their existing expertise, application area, business model and potential for expansion.
Submitted "innovation studies" must use extensive European supercomputing resources (pre-exascale and exascale) to develop and adapt generative AI models (pr. LLM).
A sum of EUR 4 million intended for the financing of experiments will be distributed among all selected sub-projects.
The deadline for submitting applications is September 4, 2024 at 5 p.m.
Are you interested in this opportunity? You can find out more information on the project website.
The experts from the National Competence Center for HPC will be happy to help you with the submission of the project - contact us..