November 14, 2024

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Country unveils its largest supercomputer, an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, inaugurated in partnership with the Danish Center for AI Innovation.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang joined the king of Denmark to launch the country’s largest sovereign AI supercomputer, aimed at breakthroughs in quantum computing, clean energy, biotechnology and other areas serving Danish society and the world.
Denmark just launched its largest sovereign AI supercomputer, Gefion, in partnership with NVIDIA and the Danish Center for AI Innovation (DCAI). The Gefion supercomputer, powered by NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and 1,528 H100 GPUs, aims to drive advancements in fields like quantum computing, clean energy, biotechnology, and more.

Gefion is operated by the Danish Center for AI Innovation (DCAI), a company established with funding from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the world’s wealthiest charitable foundation, and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark. The new AI supercomputer was symbolically turned on by King Frederik X of Denmark, Huang and Nadia Carlsten, CEO of DCAI, at an event in Copenhagen.

Huang sat down with Carlsten, a quantum computing industry leader, to discuss the public-private initiative to build one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers in collaboration with NVIDIA.

The Gefion AI supercomputer comes to Copenhagen to serve industry, startups and academia.

“Gefion is going to be a factory of intelligence. This is a new industry that never existed before. It sits on top of the IT industry. We’re inventing something fundamentally new,” Huang said.

The launch of Gefion is an important milestone for Denmark in establishing its own sovereign AI. Sovereign AI can be achieved when a nation has the capacity to produce artificial intelligence with its own data, workforce, infrastructure and business networks. Having a supercomputer on national soil provides a foundation for countries to use their own infrastructure as they build AI models and applications that reflect their unique culture and language.

“What country can afford not to have this infrastructure, just as every country realizes you have communications, transportation, healthcare, fundamental infrastructures — the fundamental infrastructure of any country surely must be the manufacturer of intelligence,” said Huang. “For Denmark to be one of the handful of countries in the world that has now initiated on this vision is really incredible.”

The new supercomputer is expected to address global challenges with insights into infectious disease, climate change and food security. Gefion is now being prepared for users, and a pilot phase will begin to bring in projects that seek to use AI to accelerate progress, including in such areas as quantum computing, drug discovery and energy efficiency.

“The era of computer-aided drug discovery must be within this decade. I’m hoping that what the computer did to the technology industry, it will do for digital biology,” Huang said

Named after a goddess in Danish mythology, Gefion is a breakthrough initiative for sovereign AI—enabling Denmark to harness and develop AI technologies with its own data, resources, and infrastructure. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, highlighted the importance of sovereign AI, saying, “Every country must have the infrastructure to manufacture intelligence.” With Gefion, Denmark joins an elite group of countries building national AI infrastructure—positioning itself as a key player in global AI and tech innovation. Gefion isn’t just for academia; it’s open to industry and startups too! Local startups like Go Autonomous and Teton are already leveraging its power for multi-modal AI and healthcare applications.
The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) is in the pilot phase, using Gefion for faster, energy-efficient weather forecasting—reducing forecast times from hours to minutes. Quantum researchers from the University of Copenhagen are working on simulations close to “quantum supremacy,” advancing from 36 to 40 entangled qubits thanks to Gefion. Another exciting application? Danish universities are using Gefion to develop genomic models for breakthroughs in vaccine design and disease mutation analysis, critical for healthcare innovation. With Gefion, Denmark is tackling global challenges—improving food security, fighting climate change, and accelerating drug discovery, all while fostering local AI talent and research. Jensen Huang expressed hope that Gefion will bring a “revolution in digital biology” akin to what computers did for tech, ushering in an era of rapid drug discovery and biotech innovation.

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