“We are in the consortium”. Defined.ai confirms “financial and data investment” in the Sines gigafactory

Defined.ai is part of the public-private consortium that is trying to attract one of the five artificial intelligence (AI) gigafactories co-financed by the European Commission to Sines, the founder and CEO of the Portuguese scaleup, which sells ethical and licensed data for training AI models, told ECO.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Web Summit, Daniela Braga confirmed that Defined.ai will have a stake in the project led by Banco Português de Fomento (BPF), adjusted to its own scale. For this to happen, the Portuguese proposal, which has the support of the Government, must win the EU Executive’s tender, which is expected to be launched later this quarter.

“We are part of the consortium”, said Daniela Braga, pointing out that Defined.ai will hold equity in this venture, which will require a total investment of around €4 billion — divided between public, European and national funds, as well as capital and debt. She also stressed that she expects to use the services of European gigafactories at a “discount”.

At issue is a European Commission plan to install five high-computing-capacity data centres in Europe, specialising in the training and inference of AI models and applications. In total, Brussels hopes to mobilise €20 billion from public and private funds, having promoted a very well-attended preliminary market consultation, in which it collected 76 proposals.

One of these proposals was drawn up by Banco Português de Fomento and submitted to Brussels in mid-June this year. The institution led by Gonçalo Regalado has been mobilising a consortium of private companies to respond to the EU Executive’s call for tenders, with a view to installing one of these gigafactories in Sines.

Among BPF’s partners in this project are several companies much larger than Defined.ai, such as the Altice group, EDP, and the pharmaceutical company Bial, as well as academic institutions, according to ECO. The participation of the American chip manufacturer Nvidia has also been reported. Daniela Braga’s statements therefore represent one of the first official confirmations.

“Obviously, it’s a financial and data investment”, explained the entrepreneur. “We are a data player and, in reality, we are a true AI player in its genesis”, stressed Daniela Braga, noting that the Portuguese proto-application “is finally something as it should be”.

Asked how confident she is that Portugal will win the European competition, the founder of Defined.ai said she was “very confident”.

“I think we finally have the country mobilised as it should be and government support”, she said, arguing that “it is important for the State and the European Union to participate”. “But Europe is very dependent on this attitude of ‘I will only do it and only take the risk if 80% of the investment is made by the public’. That shouldn’t be the case”, she criticised.

Regarding the gigafactory, Banco Português de Fomento is promoting a panel discussion on the national consortium this Wednesday at its stand at Web Summit. Daniela Braga is one of the guest speakers representing Defined.ai, along with Rui Lobo (from Tekever) and Pedro Amaral (from Instituto Superior Técnico). The conversation will be moderated by Tiago Mateus (from BPF).