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Since 2024, France has taken the lead of this Alliance, whose mission is to provide Europe with a shared digital infrastructure to support the development of generative artificial intelligence. The organization will notably work to collect and structure data to enable the training and evaluation of AI models, ensuring they perform effectively across all European languages. It brings together eighteen member states and seven observers, all committed to strengthening Europe’s competitiveness while promoting its cultural diversity and linguistic richness through language technologies.

European funding to support R&D efforts dedicated to preserving Europe’s linguistic diversityYour Content Goes Here

At the inauguration, Rachida Dati and Clara Chappaz welcomed the success of ALT-EDIC, which has been selected for four calls for projects under the Digital Europe Programme. Thanks to this recognition, ALT-EDIC, supported by more than sixty partners across the technological, academic, and industrial sectors, including 15 French entities, will receive €88 million in funding for the following projects:

  • “ALTEDIC4EU”: Aimed at establishing the digital infrastructure that will host the technologies developed by the consortium (€4M);

  • “LLMs4EU”: Focused on developing technologies for data collection, data quality enhancement, and model evaluation methodologies. To demonstrate these technologies, the project will also develop large language models for five application domains (energy, telecommunications, tourism, public services, and science), using an open approach that allows these technologies to be reused across sectors (€40M);

  • “OPENEUROLLM”: Aims to build high-performance, multilingual, open-access large language models that can be fine-tuned for commercial, industrial, and public services, based on ALT-EDIC’s datasets;

  • “LLM-BRIDGE”: Designed to support the ecosystem—particularly startups—in adopting and leveraging large language models.

These calls for projects will enable Europe to develop and gain mastery over language technologies and ensure the preservation of its linguistic and cultural diversity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Bringing together a strong ecosystem to boost the competitiveness of French and European economies in a rapidly evolving global landscape

The inauguration of ALT-EDIC comes just days after the announcement of AI Factory France being officially recognized by the EuroHPC programme. This success reaffirms France’s excellence in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and data. In this context, ALT-EDIC and AI Factory France announced the launch of discussions aimed at establishing a partnership to coordinate their efforts in data collection and the provision of computing power for AI projects.

Finally, during the event, a letter of commitment was signed following a call for expressions of interest to establish the ALT-EDIC Industrial Consortium, which now includes 38 companies, 20 of which are French. This industrial consortium will allow companies to participate in the governance of ALT-EDIC and represent the needs of the economic ecosystem in shaping the structure’s strategic directions.

 

“With ALT-EDIC, we are working towards an artificial intelligence that reflects the diversity and richness of our European languages. It is also a demonstration of our commitment to developing AI that aligns with our values, particularly in terms of transparency and respect for copyright.”
emphasizes Rachida Dati, French Minister of Culture.

 

“ALT-EDIC is a major step forward for Europe: we are developing a shared infrastructure to ensure that artificial intelligence serves all our languages and all our economic sectors. France is proud to be at the forefront of this strategic initiative for Europe’s digital sovereignty.”
emphasizes Clara Chappaz,French Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs.

Appendix 1 – LIST OF FRENCH ENTITIES PARTNERING WITH ALT-EDIC IN THE FRAMEWORK OF DIGITAL EUROPE PROJECTS

  • Assystem

  • National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

  • The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)

  • EDF

  • Evaluations and Language resources distribution agency

  • GENCI

  • Giskard

  • HubFranceIA

  • National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (INRIA)

  • National Laboratory for Metrology and Testing (LNA)

  • LightOn

  • Orange

  • pleias

  • Powerling

  • Thalès

Appendix 2 – LIST OF COMPANIES THAT JOINED THE ALT-EDIC INDUSTRIAL CONSORTIUM ON MARCH 20, 2025

  • Airbus Defence and Space

  • Alpineon d.o.o.

  • Artefact

  • Ask Mona

  • Babelscape Srl

  • Blits.ai

  • ChapsVision

  • CiviQs

  • EDF

  • EIT Digital

  • Expert.ai (Expert System Iberial Slu)

  • IA Formation

  • TILDE

  • intric

  • Jugaad s.r.l.

  • KOFEIN DIZAJN

  • kpn

  • Kyutai

  • Le Voice Lab

  • LightOn

  • LINAGORA

  • Lingua Custodia

  • MandaNetwork

  • Nova Solutions Groupe (TALKR.ai)

  • ODYSAI

  • Orange

  • pleias

  • pyannoteAI

  • Qualified.technology

  • RTV Slovenia

  • TALIA.cloud

  • Tiscali Italia / Villanova

  • Valira AI d.o.o.

  • Vocapia Research

  • Voxist

  • XLAB d.o.o.

  • Zaion