Tenerife crowned southern Europe’s AI and supercomputing capital

Tenerife has been crowned the capital of artificial intelligence and supercomputing for southern Europe. The milestone was marked on Tuesday with the inauguration of the first AI centre in the region, run by German company Bechtle. This new infrastructure, combined with the three supercomputers already on the island, will provide computing and data storage services to research centres and businesses in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and other Mediterranean countries. It is expected to generate more than 200 highly skilled scientific jobs and help foster the burgeoning scientific ecosystem in the Canary Islands.

Part of a wider diversification strategy

The centre is one of the latest steps in a science-based economic diversification strategy that the Tenerife Cabildo (island council) has been developing throughout the current legislative term. “We needed to have the critical infrastructure required to develop the scientific industry,” explains Juan José Martínez, the Cabildo’s councillor for Innovation, Research and Development. The idea is that science and technology companies looking to set up in the islands will not only enjoy substantial tax benefits but also a support base for scientific and technical development.

In fact, the project arose from the need to ensure a continuous supply of hardware for the new supercomputing system at the Institute of Technology and Renewable Energy (ITER). However, the Cabildo wanted to go further. “We were worried about commissioning a piece of equipment with enormous capabilities and it just staying at that,” Martínez insists. For this reason, the island corporation established a competitive dialogue process to evaluate the associated business models that companies could put forward.

Bechtle’s ambitious proposal

Bechtle’s proposal went beyond the Cabildo’s initial requirement. “They proposed creating a centre of excellence with continent-wide impact and they themselves would set up in Tenerife,” Martínez emphasises, adding that this was what convinced them to choose the project. The company will therefore manage ITER’s supercomputing system but also build a business around these capabilities.

Specifically, Bechtle’s technical proposal involves a convergent platform that unifies traditional supercomputing, accelerated artificial intelligence and cloud services under a single governance framework. It will feature raw storage capacity of more than 6.7 petabytes. The service catalogue is structured around four strategic lines: artificial intelligence and data science; advanced engineering; audiovisual production and video games; and applied science – in this case, astrophysics, volcanology and natural hazards.

This broad range of themes will allow Bechtle to establish synergies with companies already based on the island, such as astronomy firm Light Bridges and space telecommunications companies Telespazio and CanarySat.

500 jobs and a commitment to local talent

“The company will create 500 jobs, of which 200 will be highly skilled positions. Bechtle has committed to hiring 70% of these from the Canary Islands. If they cannot find enough local staff to meet demand, the company itself will train and fund scholarships for personnel. To ensure local talent is attracted, the company has formalised an agreement with consultancy Michael Page and plans to implement the German dual education model from DHBW University, with paid training placements in AI laboratories in Germany for Canarian students.

Moreover, the company is arriving in the islands ready to work from day one. Thanks to its expansion across several European regions, it already has more than 70,000 corporate clients who can start working with the Canarian facilities immediately. “They are already conducting job interviews,” reveals the Innovation councillor.

Two complementary sites

The centre will operate from two complementary locations: a mission-critical technical facility at the ITER D-ALiX data centre in Granadilla, and a corporate and innovation site at the Cuevas Blancas enclave within the Tenerife Science and Technology Park.

“Now we just need to expand,” Martínez concludes, stating that the offices distributed across the island’s two technology parks (Cuevas Blancas, Barranco Grande and Las Mantecas) are already becoming too small. “We have 41 companies on the waiting list to get in,” he says.

A strategic bet for Europe

During the visit to the new data centre, the President of the Tenerife Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, highlighted that this project “not only places us in the technological elite, but also allows us to build a genuine artificial intelligence ecosystem from Tenerife for the whole of Europe.” She added: “This is a strategic commitment so that our island does not just consume technology, but leads, develops and exports it.”

Bechtle will inject approximately 33 million euros in capital over the course of the contract, structured across investment in talent, physical infrastructure, the revitalisation of the local ecosystem (a startup accelerator fund and a future Bechtle-ITER Chair in Supercomputing and AI) and international commercial traction. The company will also assume and finance the operating deficit for the first three financial years, projecting a positive profit of more than 1.2 million euros by the fourth year, the Cabildo adds.

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Tenerife crowned southern Europe’s AI and supercomputing capital