The EU-LAC Supercomputing Network for AI initiative , launched during the Global Gateway Forum, aims to improve the interoperability of supercomputing resources between Latin America and Europe, and to accelerate the competitiveness of artificial intelligence and supercomputing in both regions. The project, coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), falls within the European Union's Global Gateway strategy and is part of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, launched in March 2023.
At a time when supercomputing and AI are key tools for innovation, scientific development and competitiveness, the project will work along four main lines: political dialogue on the federation of supercomputing resources; capacity building; the acceleration of use cases; and the integration of BELLA (Building the Europe Link with Latin America), a joint initiative that connects the science, education and innovation networks of Europe and Latin America through infrastructures such as EllaLink, a submarine fibre-optic cable linking Portugal and Brazil since 2021.
The consortium, coordinated by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and the BSC and funded by the European Union, also includes the following European institutions: the CINECA supercomputing centre (Italy), CSC – IT Center for Science (Finland), the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (Portugal), the Institute of Information Science (Slovenia), the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (Germany) and the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (France). The project will strengthen scientific collaboration with seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Uruguay.
The project includes an extensive programme of training and summer schools. As part of this, BSC will contribute its more than 20 years of experience collaborating with institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as its track record in training researchers in supercomputing and artificial intelligence. This contribution will make it possible to transfer knowledge to new teams and to strengthen a scientific community connected across both sides of the Atlantic.
"EU-LAC stems from more than two decades of joint work and from a conviction: supercomputing and artificial intelligence are more useful when they are developed together. We learn as much as we contribute from this collaboration, at a key moment when AI must include our languages and the diversity of our societies," says Mateo Valero, Director of BSC.
This commitment to an inclusive AI that reflects the diversity of both sides of the Atlantic will also be highlighted at the upcoming Ibero-American Digital Forum, which will bring together global leaders and senior regional figures in digital governance and transformation this Tuesday, November 3, in Madrid. Centered around key themes such as Artificial Intelligence, digital rights, and cybersecurity, the event will feature a keynote address by Mateo Valero in the auditorium of the Royal Mint of Spain (Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre).
EU-LAC Supercomputing Network for AI is not limited to connecting machines; it starts from specific challenges in the region. The four use cases are:
The selection of these use cases was presented at the 2026 Latin American High-Performance Computing Conference (CARLA) in Córdoba, Argentina.
Overall, these challenges are key not only because of their scientific and technical impact, but also because they respond to social concerns. According to the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2025 report, drought affected up to 85% of Mexican territory. In this context, supercomputing makes it possible to simulate scenarios, anticipate risks and provide authorities with useful information in advance.
Several of these use cases build on work already under way at BSC. For example, the FIATLatam project, led by BSC and launched in December 2025 with funding from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), promotes the collaborative development of language models and AI resources that reflect the linguistic diversity, contexts and sectors of Latin American reality, including the varieties of Spanish and Portuguese. The project starts with the collection, selection and preparation of datasets in Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, with the possibility of incorporating Indigenous languages, in order to adapt existing models such as ALIA.
Over its more than 20 years of history, BSC's partners and collaborators have included nearly 60 institutions in 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries (Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela), and the centre currently has 10 active projects. Brazil is the country with the most shared projects, followed by Chile, Colombia and Argentina.
BSC's collaboration with the two largest countries in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico, is now central. In Mexico, BSC is supporting the development of Coatlicue, the public supercomputer that, with a planned capacity of 314 petaflops, aims to be the most powerful in Latin America. This infrastructure will be the central node of the National Supercomputing Cluster and will be installed at the National Polytechnic Institute .
In Brazil, BSC signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing (LNCC) in 2024, focused on AI research. LNCC operates Santos Dumont , the country's most powerful supercomputer, with 27 petaflops, and will manage the new AI supercomputer that the Brazilian government unveiled in August this year. According to Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, this infrastructure aims to reach 7,200 petaflops for artificial intelligence and will be available to companies, universities, scientific institutions and governments wishing to train models, carry out research and develop AI applications.
With both partners, the work focuses on the shared use of capacities, research into digital twins and the development of language models. The underlying idea is to add up rather than duplicate: to bring together the supercomputing centres of both regions so that everyone gains capacity, knowledge and technological autonomy.
One of the areas where cooperation between BSC and Latin America has produced the most tangible results is the study of the impact of climate change on health and the anticipation of outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, combining climate and epidemiological data with forecasting models.
Among other initiatives, the BSC also collaborates on the MAPHSA project, focused on documenting and protecting the pre-Columbian archaeological heritage of Colombia and Brazil by developing cutting-edge methods for the automated detection of threatened archaeological sites.