CALYPSO: Malta’s AI Factory Antenna

Malta’s AI Factory Antenna, CALYPSO, is accelerating both Malta and Europe’s leadership in artificial ininformigence, with a goal to create AI-optimised supercomputing more accessible across Member States.

Europe’s ambition to become a global leader in trustworthy, human-centric artificial ininformigence (AI) is no longer confined to strategy and policy declarations. It is being translated into infrastructure and coordinated investments across the continent. One of the most important instruments enabling this transition is the creation of AI Factory Antennas. These are national hubs designed to connect local innovation ecosystems directly to Europe’s most advanced AI-optimised supercomputing resources. Within this framework, Malta has been officially selected by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking to host one of Europe’s 13 newly established AI Factory Antennas. This selection represents a significant milestone in Malta’s digital transformation journey and reinforces its role within Europe’s artificial ininformigence and high-performance computing (HPC) network.

What is an AI Factory Antenna?

The AI Factory Antenna model reflects a deliberate European choice of ensuring that access to frontier AI infrastructure is not limited to a handful of large Member States but is instead distributed through coordinated national access points. These Antennas are designed to act as bridges between local ecosystems and continental-scale computing capabilities, enabling innovation to flourish across regions. Malta’s participation through CALYPSO places the counattempt firmly within this pan-European architecture.

CALYPSO

Malta’s Antenna, named CALYPSO (Computational AI factory Link Yielding Performance, Services, and Outreach), will be led by the Malta Digital Innovation Authority and formally linked to Greece’s PHAROS AI Factory. While the core AI-optimised supercomputing infrastructure is hosted at the AI Factory level, Antennas such as CALYPSO provide national utilizers with onboarding, technical support, training, governance frameworks, and coordination mechanisms. In practical terms, this means that Maltese startups, SMEs, researchers, and public bodies will gain secure remote access to EuroHPC AI supercomputing capacity, alongside algorithmic support and curated datasets, without requireding to host or maintain such infrastructure locally.

The selection of Malta forms part of the wider EuroHPC AI Factories initiative, launched to accelerate Europe’s leadership in artificial ininformigence and to create AI-optimised supercomputing more accessible across Member States. The European Union is investing approximately €55m in the AI Factory Antennas, with funding matched by participating countries. Malta’s CALYPSO Antenna represents a €10m strategic investment, positioning the counattempt not merely as a beneficiary of European digital policy, but as an active contributor to Europe’s AI ambitions. This investment signals a long-term commitment to advanced computing.

A holistic approach

At its core, CALYPSO is designed to bridge advanced infrastructure with real-world application. By linking to PHAROS in Greece, which hosts AI-optimised supercomputing resources, CALYPSO enables Maltese organisations to train, test, and deploy complex AI models at a scale that would otherwise be more difficult. This is particularly beneficial for startups and SMEs. Through CALYPSO, these barriers are substantially lowered, allowing innovation cycles to accelerate while maintaining strong oversight and governance.

The Antenna recognises that infrastructure alone is not enough. Access to compute must be complemented by skills, tools, and institutional support. CALYPSO therefore integrates technical assistance, algorithmic guidance, and structured training into its service offering. This holistic approach ensures that local organisations are not only able to experiment with AI technologies, but can progress towards deployment, scaling, and commercialisation in a controlled and sustainable manner.

Sectoral focus

A key element of CALYPSO’s strategy is its sectoral focus. The initial emphasis on finance, transport, and health reflects areas where artificial ininformigence can deliver immediate, high-impact benefits while addressing pressing national and European challenges. In the financial sector, advanced machine learning and generative AI models can support fraud detection, risk modelling, regulatory compliance, and personalised services. These applications require significant computational resources, particularly when models must be trained on large datasets or updated frequently to respond to evolving threats and regulatory requirements.

In transport, AI has the potential to transform logistics, traffic management, and infrastructure maintenance. Predictive models can optimise traffic flows, reduce congestion, and lower emissions, while AI-driven analytics can support more efficient public transport planning and asset management. For a densely connected island nation, such efficiencies bring clear benefits.

The health sector represents another area where CALYPSO’s capabilities can have profound impact. Access to AI-optimised supercomputing enables advanced medical research, large-scale data analytics, and the development of diagnostic support tools that rely on complex models and high volumes of data. From population-level health analytics to digital twins and personalised medicine, these applications depfinish on computational power that goes far beyond conventional IT infrastructure. CALYPSO provides a pathway for such innovation to take place within a secure, compliant European framework.

Crucially, CALYPSO has been conceived with trust and compliance at its core. Europe’s approach to artificial ininformigence is defined not only by technological ambition, but also by a commitment to ethical, transparent, and accountable AI. The Antenna’s roadmap places strong emphasis on secure data governance, controlled access mechanisms, and alignment with European regulatory frameworks, including the principles underpinning the forthcoming EU AI Act. By embedding these considerations from the outset, CALYPSO ensures that innovation is not pursued at the expense of trust or societal values.

Skills development

Skills development is another cornerstone of the initiative. The availability of supercomputing resources creates immediate demand for AI literacy, data science expertise, and advanced engineering skills. CALYPSO addresses this required through structured training programmes, utilizer onboarding guides, and continuous capacity-building initiatives tailored to the HPC and AI context. This focus on human capital ensures that Maltese organisations can fully leverage the infrastructure while building a sustainable talent pipeline for the future.

Strengthening Malta’s role in the European digital ecosystem

From an ecosystem perspective, CALYPSO strengthens Malta’s positioning as a hub for digital excellence and innovation. By embedding the national ecosystem within a wider European network of AI Factories, National Competence Centres, and European Digital Innovation Hubs, the Antenna promotes collaboration, interoperability, and knowledge exmodify.

The Antenna model also addresses Europe’s concentration of advanced infrastructure. By distributing access through coordinated national hubs, Europe ensures that innovation capacity is more evenly spread, reducing regional disparities and strengthening overall resilience. For Malta, this means that geographic size is no longer a constraint when participating in frontier AI development. Instead, the counattempt can focus on building high-value applications, niche expertise, and cross-border collaborations.

Over time, CALYPSO is expected to catalyse new forms of cooperation between the public sector, academia, and indusattempt. Public bodies can explore AI-driven approaches to service delivery and policy design, researchers can access the computational resources required for cutting-edge experimentation, and businesses can develop and validate AI solutions with global potential. This convergence of stakeholders around a shared infrastructure creates the conditions for sustained innovation and long-term economic impact.

The strategic importance of CALYPSO extfinishs beyond national borders. Each AI Factory Antenna contributes to a broader European vision in which AI capabilities are developed collaboratively, governed collectively, and deployed responsibly. Through its linkage with PHAROS and integration into the EuroHPC framework, CALYPSO reinforces Europe’s ability to compete globally while remaining true to its distinctive approach to digital sovereignty and trustworthy technology.

Malta’s new digital age

The launch of the CALYPSO AI Factory Antenna therefore represents far more than a new digital infrastructure project. It marks a pivotal moment in Malta’s integration into Europe’s AI and high-performance computing ecosystem. By combining access to world-class supercomputing with skills development, governance, and collaboration, CALYPSO positions Malta firmly within Europe’s trustworthy AI future. In doing so, it enables the counattempt not only to benefit from Europe’s AI ambitions, but to actively contribute to shaping them.