Fujitsu collaborates with French partners to invest 50€ million into Artificial Intelligence and Deep-learning R&D. The project includes a Center of Excellence at the École Polytechnique, joint research with Inria, and building an eco-system of commercial partnerships.
Fujitsu has a long history of industrial technology development. Today this focuses on technologies that help clients navigate their own digital transformations. Developments in artificial intelligence and machine-learning are at the heart of these technologies. Fujitsu put image recognition technology on display at the Teratec Forum for High-performance Computing at the École Polytechnique just south of Paris and promoted their plans for a new Center of Excellence in artificial intelligence.
Linking R&D, students, start-ups and industrial companies in artificial intelligence development
This was a perfect platform to present visitors with the details of the AI Center of Excellence that was announced 3 months earlier and which will be located at the École Polytechnique itself. This agreement between Fujitsu and the French government will bring together academics, students, established businesses and start-up companies with a focus on artificial intelligence to develop new services and technologies. Along with a research agreement with Inria, this project represents a 5-year, 50€ million commitment to research and development in artificial intelligence, deep-learning and natural language processing. PW had the opportunity to discuss the details with Fujitsu's Julien CHOSSADE.
According to M CHOSSADE, the Center of Excellence targets AI for new solutions to address customer pain-points, to help them adapt or transform their business models, as well as to address analytics and big data analysis. The center is housed in the École Polytechnique's incubator. This facilitates the development and growth of French start-up companies in the area of AI.
There is a clear benefit for Fujitsu and France. France is Europe's second largest economy and has the largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in Europe. It has a long history in academic excellence and is a center of R&D. Fujitsu has invested in digital transformation technologies which include artificial intelligence, internet of things, and big data analytics. This new investment can be viewed as an extension of a broader investment in Europe. Fujitsu presented an artificial intelligence application using image recognition at the Teratec Forum which will help accelerate the design process. The application was developed at the Fujitsu Laboratories Europe in London.
Introducing the Fujitsu AI Center of Excellence
The PW Perspective
The French-Fujitsu cooperation is more than an interesting collaboration. It leverages the French expertise in R&D, its excellent higher-education system, and a large network of established enterprises located in Europe's 2nd largest economy. The cooperation brings to bear Fujitsu's experience in AI, IOT, analytics as well as business expertise to develop and guide applications of R&D toward valuable business solutions. As these investments will support AI startups in France, the project creates a positive feedback loop among all the participants from students to university researchers to startups to established companies.
