Barcelona Supercomputing Center Opens AI Accelerator Programme to Startups
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center's AI Factory Accelerator Programme is now in full operation after a pilot phase, offering startups sovereign compute, technical support and training. According to NVIDIA, some BSC AI Factory services are now also available through the NVIDIA Inception portal.
- BSC's AI Factory Accelerator Programme is now in full operation after a pilot phase.
- Some BSC AI Factory services are now available through the NVIDIA Inception portal.
- BSC AI Factory, the first in Spain, has delivered more than 800 services since its April 2025 launch, according to NVIDIA.
- Qatium, OneCareAI and Avatia were named AI Champions at the pilot demo day.
- An upcoming MareNostrum 5 extension will provide supercomputing access via AI Factories across Europe.
From pilot to full operation
The BSC AI Factory Accelerator Programme is designed to help startups innovate across industries. It provides access to sovereign compute, technical support and training. Many of the participating companies are also members of NVIDIA Inception, the company's program for cutting-edge startups.
NVIDIA says Inception complements the Barcelona programme by offering members training through NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute open courses, business mentoring, venture capital connections and other resources.
BSC AI Factory is among Europe's first AI factories and the first in Spain. According to NVIDIA, it has delivered more than 800 services to private and public-sector clients since its April 2025 launch.
An upcoming extension of MareNostrum 5 will deliver supercomputing access through the BSC AI Factory and other AI Factories across Europe. NVIDIA describes MareNostrum 5 as BSC's public infrastructure serving scientific and technological innovation, powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing.
Three AI Champions named at demo day
Three Inception members were named the programme's AI Champions at the pilot initiative's demo day.
- Qatium: Its water-network platform is already used by more than 250 utilities in 16 countries. The company is now in early production with its Neural Water Intelligence technology, which runs on proprietary AI models trained on MareNostrum 5. It is built on NVIDIA accelerated computing, the NVIDIA cuGraph library, the NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo framework and NVIDIA Nemotron open models, and helps utilities make better operational decisions every day.
- OneCareAI: A research spin-off from BSC, it used NVIDIA NIM microservices to develop technology designed to identify signs of hidden atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, in seemingly normal ECGs. The aim is to help clinicians find patients at risk of stroke before one occurs.
- Avatia: It built a voice-first, multi-agent system that gives pharmaceutical companies agentic coworkers to support sales representatives and provide doctors with transparent, curated information about medicines. The system uses NVIDIA NIM microservices, the NVIDIA Nemotron 3 open model family and the open source NVIDIA NeMo Curator library.
A broad cohort and what it means
Other startups in the BSC AI Factory are Agrikola AI, Elna Health, Lokutor, Montevive AI, Oppy, Pack2Earth and Up2Smart. Together they span precision agriculture, medical imaging and knowledge access, speech services, enterprise security, sales intelligence and sustainable packaging.
NVIDIA says the cohort shows the breadth of what advanced intelligence can now unlock. Its examples include preventing strokes, detecting breast cancer subtypes before biopsy, putting medical knowledge at doctors' fingertips faster, replacing petroleum-based plastic with biobased compostable materials, and protecting crops with robots instead of chemicals.
For startups in Spain and across Europe, the move gives a clearer route to publicly operated, sovereign compute, combined with the training, mentoring and investor connections of NVIDIA Inception. The planned MareNostrum 5 extension points to wider access through other European AI Factories, though the source gives no further details on timing or capacity.
