Bull has been selected to deliver LUMI-AI, a €387.8 million AI supercomputer that will expand Europe's AI infrastructure with a tenfold increase in AI capacity. The system, hosted by the LUMI AI Factory consortium and deployed at CSC's data center in Kajaani, Finland, is scheduled for deployment in the second half of 2027.
The supercomputer will nearly double the high-performance computing capability of the current LUMI system. It will support industrial innovation, scientific research, and advanced AI applications across Europe, accelerating AI training and inference while enabling large-scale scientific simulations.
Funding is shared equally between the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and the LUMI AI Factory consortium, which includes Finland, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, and Poland.
European AI infrastructure grows
LUMI-AI is the sixth AI Factory procurement contract signed by EuroHPC JU. Anders Jensen, EuroHPC JU Executive Director, said the systems "will form a powerful European AI infrastructure ecosystem, enabling SMEs and startups to access world-class supercomputing resources, unlock the full potential of AI, and drive innovation, growth, and technological leadership across Europe."
Kimmo Koski, Managing Director of CSC, said the project builds on the success of the LUMI supercomputer. "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."
Energy efficiency by design
Sustainability is a core principle of the project. The system relies on Bull's Direct Liquid Cooling solution, a patented technology that uses warm water to cool the supercomputer. Excess heat will be captured and fed into Kajaani's district heating network, increasing the share of heating produced from recovered data center energy.
The facility runs entirely on renewable electricity. Bull says LUMI-AI will be among the world's most energy-efficient large-scale AI infrastructures.
Emmanuel Le Roux, CEO of Bull, said the project "further reinforces our European leadership in developing the most energy-efficient and complex AI infrastructures." He added that Bull's patented water-cooling technologies and high-performance interconnect (BXI) confirm the strength of the company's technological leadership.
Hardware and partners
The liquid-cooled supercomputer is based on Bull's BullSequana XH3500 architecture, purpose-built for advanced AI workloads. It will use next-generation AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs and 6th Gen AMD EPYC 256-core processors.
IBM provides a high-performance storage solution based on IBM Storage Scale. Nokia contributes data center networking expertise alongside Bull's BXI interconnect, Europe's only high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect designed for HPC and AI environments.
Thomas Zacharia, Senior Vice President at AMD, said the system "will strengthen Europe's sovereign AI capacity, accelerate scientific discovery, and give researchers, startups and industry the scale and flexibility to shape Europe's AI future."
For researchers and scientists, the practical takeaway is direct: LUMI-AI will offer substantially more compute for AI training and inference work, plus the ability to run large-scale simulations that current systems cannot handle. The system's focus on energy efficiency also matters for research institutions facing pressure to reduce the environmental footprint of their computing workloads. Those working in fields like health, climate science, and materials research should watch for access opportunities through the LUMI AI Factory consortium once the system goes live in 2027.
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