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Records to 2026-09

Sovereign AI

Sovereign programme record · Spain · 2024–2025

Spain: ~$1.62B announced · disbursement not on record

Spain: BSC AI Factory + MareNostrum 5 + AI Strategy 2024

  • Announced~$1.62B
  • Government funding~$1.62B
  • Committed—

    No committed dollar amount on record.

  • Disbursed—

    No disbursed dollar amount on record.

Funding stages share a dollar scale. A hatched track marks an absent figure and gives its reason. Tildes mark estimated figures.

Operating compute / delivered hardware. Reported operational or delivered: 4,480 NVIDIA H100 (physical hardware). Announced in EUR, converted at 1.0818 as of 2024-05-14 via the Federal Reserve's H.10 series on FRED (DEXUSEU, US dollars per euro).

Funding components

ComponentKindAmount
EUR 1.5B National AI Strategy 2024Government$1.62B
MareNostrum 5 procurement (€151.41M; EuroHPC and Spain/Portugal/Türkiye consortium)Government—
MareNostrum 5 AI upgrade (€129M, January 2026; EuroHPC and participating countries)Government—
MareNostrum 5 and Spanish Supercomputing Network (€90M within the €1.5B strategy)Government—

The residualThe amount-bearing components sum to $1.62B against the $1.62B headline, a difference of $0.

Hardware on record

ModelCountStatusOrganisation / role
NVIDIA H1004,480OperationalBSC MareNostrum 5 ACC partition (government/EuroHPC)

Physical hardware: MareNostrum 5 accelerated partition: 1,120 nodes with four GPUs each. Primary source

Empanelled partners · 9

PartnerAcceleratorsModelStageSource
Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS)——AwardedPrimary source · 2024-12-10

Hosts MareNostrum 5 and leads the BSC AI Factory, which provides computing access and technical support for AI development.

  • Programme-level disclosure
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT)——EmpanelledPrimary source · 2024-12-10

Represents Portugal in the BSC AI Factory consortium.

  • Programme-level disclosure
Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)——EmpanelledPrimary source · 2024-12-10

Represents Türkiye in the BSC AI Factory consortium.

  • Programme-level disclosure
National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI București)——EmpanelledPrimary source · 2024-12-10

Represents Romania in the BSC AI Factory consortium.

  • Programme-level disclosure
FSAS Technologies——AwardedPrimary source · 2026-01-26

Leads the consortium with Telefónica contracted to expand MareNostrum 5’s AI capabilities in January 2026.

  • Programme-level disclosure
Telefonica——AwardedPrimary source · 2026-01-26

Works with FSAS Technologies on the January 2026 MareNostrum 5 AI upgrade contract.

  • Programme-level disclosure
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades——EmpanelledPrimary source · 2020-12-23

The science ministry participates in BSC’s public consortium and its funding agreement.

  • Programme-level disclosure
Generalitat de Catalunya – Departament de Recerca i Universitats——EmpanelledPrimary source · 2024-12-10

Participates in BSC’s public consortium; the December 2024 AI Factory announcement allocated €14M from the Catalan government.

  • Programme-level disclosure
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC)——EmpanelledPrimary source · 2020-12-23

University member of BSC’s public consortium and a party to its funding agreement.

  • Programme-level disclosure

External dependence

NVIDIA hardware: Medium · US technology: Medium. These are editorial assessments based on the programme’s procurement disclosures.

Named partners: BSC-CNS, EuroHPC JU, Spanish Government, Catalan Government, FSAS Technologies, Telefonica, Fujitsu.

BSC provides research and industry access to MareNostrum 5; its accelerated partition has 4,480 NVIDIA H100 GPUs. The BSC AI Factory has offered computing access and technical support since April 2025. ALIA uses MareNostrum 5 to train public language models for Spanish and its co-official languages. A €129M upgrade contract signed in January 2026 covers additional AI capacity.

Data-quality caveats on this record · 5

  • MareNostrum 5’s accelerated partition comprises 1,120 nodes with four NVIDIA Hopper GPUs each. Its general-purpose partition uses Intel CPUs.
  • The June 2022 MareNostrum 5 procurement budget was €151.41M: half from EuroHPC and half from a consortium of Spain, Portugal and Türkiye. The published budget covers procurement; payments to suppliers are not itemized.
  • The January 2026 AI upgrade contract covers acquisition, delivery, installation and maintenance for €129M. EuroHPC supplies half of the funding; Spain, Portugal and Türkiye supply the remainder.
  • Spain’s AI Strategy 2024 budgeted €1.5B for 2024–25, including €90M for MareNostrum 5 and the Spanish Supercomputing Network. That €90M overlaps the strategy total. Its relationship to the later AI Factory contract is not reconciled.
  • The dollar figure converts the €1.5B strategy budget at US$1.0818 per euro on 14 May 2024, BSC’s publication date, from the Federal Reserve’s H.10 series distributed by FRED. The three procurement components below have their own dates and carry no dollar equivalent.

The evidence trail

12 cited sources

Machine accessThe same record, machine-readable: the evidence-trail feed and the derivation-chain export.