This direction focuses on ensuring that European data and AI infrastructures and programmes are accessible and useful to a broad range of organisations, particularly SMEs, startups, public-sector organisations and regional innovation ecosystems. Investments must be complemented by practical access mechanisms, tools, services, skills and support that enable innovators to exploit them. This can be done by:
- Enabling effective access for SMEs, startups, and innovation actors, improving the accessibility to the EU ecosystem to industry players, especially SMEs and startups. Current developments often focus heavily on infrastructure, while giving less attention to the tools, platforms, access mechanisms and enabling conditions needed by smaller innovators. Europe should develop practical mechanisms that allow SMEs and startups to effectively access and benefit from European AI and data infrastructure investments.
- Reducing barriers to participation in European data and AI initiatives, including technical, financial, administrative, organisational and skills-related barriers, and simplifying access to relevant infrastructures, services and funding opportunities for a broader range of organisations and innovators
Supporting European capabilities and competitiveness in next-generation AI
This direction focuses on strengthening Europe’s ability to develop and compete in frontier and next-generation AI technologies. While Europe has strong capabilities in research, industrial AI, data and computing, it remains underrepresented in some of the most rapidly advancing areas of AI. Europe should therefore complement its focus on deployment and responsible AI with greater ambition in frontier research, efficient AI and emerging AI paradigms