This pilot supports the Apply AI Strategy^[1], particularly its research and innovation efforts, which aims to advance core AI capabilities, especially in frontier AI, and support fundamental AI research. The initiative will pool strategic resources to push the technological frontiers of AI and drive scientific breakthroughs, ensuring that the project contributes to the EU's goal of maintaining European leadership in AI research. Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Set up a network of excellent AI Labs in the EU and Associated Countries, raising visibility and strengthening collaboration in European AI research
• Establish a model of cooperation among these labs and support the development of a strategic research agenda for fundamental research in AI.
• Ensure that the network operates as a virtual institute across Europe, pooling resources and expertise.
• Develop synergies with the AI in science efforts in RAISE.
• Stimulate and support world-class research in AI, both fundamental and applied research. Building on Europe’s research strength, attract collaboration with industry and excellent AI talent.

Scope:

Ensuring Europe's technological sovereignty in AI requires reinforcing and leveraging Europe's strengths, particularly its world-class AI research community.

The selected consortium should be composed by leading European AI research institutions. These AI research institutes should be entities with legal structure, dedicated facilities and, a significant number of research teams focusing on AI research. This category also includes multidisciplinary research institutions that host AI-focused branches meeting these criteria. The consortium will pilot a network of excellent European AI research institutes that will collaboratively address fundamental AI research topics, pushing the frontier of the domain. Participants will cooperate within a virtual institute, attracting talents, stimulating industrial initiatives, providing inputs for moonshot projects and developing research agendas for the ones retained by the EC. A substantial share of the project effort should be dedicated to advancing research.

To achieve these objectives, the consortium will undertake a range of dedicated activities:

• The project will draw an ambitious strategic research agenda towards the next frontier in AI (in 5 years), including explicit targets and milestones;
• The coordination of the participating institutes and their research in AI will be driven by a world class AI research program. The defined programmes will guide collaborative efforts and ensure a cohesive approach to advancing fundamental AI. Collaboration will, among other, be reinforced by jointly supervised PhDs and Postdocs.
• The implementation of a world class AI research program, supporting PhDs and Postdocs as well as jointly agreed collaborative research projects, functioning as a distributed "European AI Institute," reflecting the RAISE initiative's long-term vision and enhancing collaboration.

This topic will bring together excellent AI research Institutes in Europe to further develop basic science in AI. Given the importance of such consortium, every participating institution will have to demonstrate its excellence in AI Research through a number of objective criteria.

To ensure openness, during the first year, the project will establish a call for expressions of interest to identify additional leading European AI research labs and individual experts that may collaborate with the project through joint activities or other forms of cooperation to support the expected outcomes and the dedicated activities described in this topic. Proposals should describe the type of actions planned for these collaborations. Appropriate budget and effort should be allocated to ensure that such collaborations complement the network’s expertise and strengthen the implementation of the roadmap.

This initiative will also work in close collaboration with other initiatives in the European AI landscape, such as existing Networks of Excellence, AI societies and associations, and with the fundamental research activities in AI taking place in the horizontal call HORIZON-RAISE and in the EIC pathfinder initiatives to be integrated in RAISE. All proposals are expected to allocate tasks for cohesion activities with the CSA HORIZON-CL4-2025-03-HUMAN-18: GenAI4EU central Hub.

The project selected in this topic should link to the resources offered by the AI Factories and the Data Labs and exploit the various tools offered by the AI-on-demand-platform to share the result and further develop the community.

Beneficiaries that intend to transfer ownership or grant an exclusive licence must formally notify the granting authority (i.e. DG-CNECT and HaDEA) before the intended transfer or licensing takes place and the granting authority may up to four years after the end of the action object to a transfer of ownership or the exclusive licensing of results.

[1] COM(2025)723 Apply AI Strategy