Netherlands and Germany Join Forces on AI Chip Design
NADI and SPRIND will fund small teams using AI to speed up chip design, as Europe seeks to cut reliance on US and Chinese technology.
The Netherlands' newly established National Agency for Disruptive Innovation (NADI) will collaborate with its German counterpart, SPRIND, on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence chip design, the agency said on Wednesday.
NADI was set up this month with €500 million ($570 million) in government funding, modelled on the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Established in 1958 after the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch, DARPA contributed to technologies behind the internet, stealth aircraft and GPS.
Under the partnership, NADI and SPRIND will commit €40 million over 20 months to groups of small teams using AI to accelerate the design of chips for training and running, or "inference", AI models.
NADI co-founder Jelle Prins said a partnership with Germany on chips was a natural fit, citing the strong ecosystem around Dutch equipment maker ASML and German strengths in research and manufacturing. He noted that NVIDIA chips, while powerful, are inefficient for inference tasks, comparing them to "doing your shopping with a truck" rather than a grocery cart.
The project is part of broader European efforts to reduce reliance on US expertise. France established its defence innovation agency AID in 2018, Germany set up SPRIND in 2019 and Britain launched ARIA in 2023.
France's AID backed the development of remote-controlled munitions capable of destroying armoured targets at a distance of 50 km (30 miles), which are entering procurement by the French military. SPRIND is separately running a €125 million challenge aimed at creating three European frontier-AI labs.
Jano Costard, SPRIND's head of challenges, said the goal with chips was to achieve "several orders of magnitude acceleration" in a design process that currently takes years.