• EuroHPC signed a €387.8m procurement contract with Bull to deliver LUMI-AI at CSC's new data centre in Kajaani, Finland
  • The system is scheduled for deployment in the second half of 2027 and is expected to provide ten times LUMI's AI capacity and nearly twice its HPC capability

The fact

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking signed a €387.8m procurement contract with Bull on 31 August for LUMI-AI, a new AI-optimised supercomputer to be installed at CSC's new data centre in Kajaani, Finland. The contract covers acquisition, delivery, installation and maintenance, with the cost shared equally between EuroHPC and the six-country LUMI AI Factory consortium. Deployment is scheduled for the second half of 2027.

LUMI-AI will use Bull's BullSequana XH3500 architecture with AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs and sixth-generation AMD EPYC processors. EuroHPC and CSC expect the system to provide about ten times the AI capacity of the existing LUMI supercomputer and nearly double its HPC capability. It will serve as the computing backbone of the LUMI AI Factory.

The assessment

Bull’s selection gives CSC a specific machine to prepare for. The work now moves to Kajaani, where the new data centre must be ready for hardware delivery, installation and commissioning before LUMI-AI can be opened to users.

The promised increase in computing power does not change that sequence. Bull can deliver a system designed to provide ten times LUMI’s AI capacity, but that capacity remains unavailable until the equipment is installed, integrated with the site and accepted for operation.

For BTW readers, the second half of 2027 is when those plans should become visible in the data centre. Hardware deliveries, completed installation and the first workloads running on LUMI-AI will show whether the €387.8m procurement has reached operation on schedule.

What to Watch

Watch for BullSequana hardware delivery, confirmation that CSC's new Kajaani data centre is ready for installation and the start of system commissioning. The decisive milestone will be LUMI-AI entering service in the second half of 2027. After launch, allocation and utilisation data will show how much of the new capacity is being used by research, startups and industry.