What was recently confined to futuristic forecasts has become reality: Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, JUPITER, has officially opened at the Jülich research center. The ceremony was attended by Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Science Minister Dorothee Bär. But beyond the political spotlight lies a more important detail — this computing platform is open not only to science and government but also to startups.
The JUPITER AI Factory (JAIF), launched in March 2025, is not just a data center with chips but a full ecosystem for building and deploying AI models. Applications range across healthcare, energy, climate science, media, and finance. For European startups, this is not just faster computation — it is access to the architecture of the future, where large-scale model training, molecular simulation, predictive analytics, and quantum-compatible algorithms become reality.
The system is built on 24,000 Nvidia GH200 Grace-Hopper superchips and delivers a peak performance of 793 petaflops, focusing not only on raw power but also on energy efficiency. It is one of the world’s most powerful and “greenest” computing systems, a cornerstone of European technological sovereignty.
Previously, startups relied on cloud services and rented servers. Now they can scale their AI solutions at a level once reserved for the largest corporations. This changes the game: from drug discovery to digital twins and real-time generative AI.
It may well be here, in Jülich, that Europe’s new DeepMind will be born — and it is not impossible that its code is already compiling inside JUPITER’s core.
