Within the world AI race, Estonia can’t afford to surrender. Our goal is to not win, however to have competence in all key areas.
As an augmented workforce turns into more and more frequent, a number of main service sectors are unable to course of their knowledge utilizing standard industrial giant language fashions (LLMs). These embody delicate domains resembling healthcare, defence, and citizen knowledge. Growing an Estonian giant language mannequin that’s each exact and efficient would subsequently be extremely useful for Estonian society; nevertheless, because of the nation’s small dimension, there may be little industrial incentive for others to undertake such improvement. To protect and shield the Estonian language within the context of the speedy development of synthetic intelligence (AI), and to create sensible purposes for on a regular basis use, the Institute of Laptop Science on the College of Tartu is coaching an open-source language mannequin to speak extra fluently in Estonian and to raised perceive Estonian tradition. The mannequin is educated utilizing the pc cluster of the College of Tartu HPC Centre (UTHPC).
There’s a broad vary of revolutionary, research-based enterprises with heightened necessities for mental property safety and knowledge safety, which require absolute readability concerning their authorized and safety environments.
Our resolution is based totally on funding in data
At present, it’s evident that Estonia’s resolution to construct its financial system on new applied sciences and training following the restoration of independence 35 years in the past has yielded important advantages.
UTHPC advantages from being a part of the University of Tartu, which ranks among the many high 1.2% of universities worldwide and offers a broad base of experience, starting from foundational disciplines to extremely specialised fields, together with synthetic intelligence. This atmosphere presents distinctive alternatives for collaboration with main researchers and permits the supply of extremely sensible coaching programs to College of Tartu college students, taught by professionals straight concerned in cutting-edge HPC and AI operations.
Based mostly on our expertise, AI brokers might be extremely efficient, however solely when customers possess enough experience to validate and proper their outputs. We subsequently imagine that, alongside technological development, the demand for extremely expert IT professionals will enhance somewhat than diminish.
Secondly, our method focuses on constructing our personal methods
The University of Tartu High Performance Computing Centre (UTHPC) was formally established in 2008; nevertheless, scientific computing in Tartu dates again to 1959, when the College’s first scientific computing centre was based. In 2008, the Centre deployed its first computing cluster, named Aurumasin (‘Steam Engine’), consisting of 42 Solar Hearth nodes with eight cores every, 32 GB of RAM, and 10 TB of shared storage.
Since then, UTHPC has advanced from a supplier of primary compute cycles right into a complete service supporting customers throughout the whole analysis lifecycle, from environment friendly execution of analyses to safe knowledge storage and full compliance with related regulatory necessities.
In February 2026, our native computing capability elevated by roughly an order of magnitude. We commissioned new GPU sources, together with 12 NVIDIA H200, 24 NVIDIA B200, and 40 NVIDIA RTX Professional 6000 Blackwell Max-Q GPUs. In collaboration with the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, this {hardware} was procured to speed up the event of nationwide and scientific AI options. In consequence, our mixed cloud, Kubernetes, and cluster infrastructure now contains 164 GPUs, 21,520 CPU threads, and 118 TB of system reminiscence, alongside greater than 17 petabytes of usable storage and over 30 petabytes devoted to archival functions.
Equally essential to this superior {hardware} infrastructure is a workforce of greater than 50 extremely educated specialists. The workforce actively participates in cyber defence workouts and hackathons, contributing each to resilience in opposition to cyber threats and to the exploration of future AI-driven options.
As an example our progress, we current a number of key milestones beneath.
Formation of the Estonian Scientific Computing Panorama
As computational strategies turned an integral part of analysis throughout most scientific disciplines, the necessity for a nationwide consortium turned more and more evident. In response, the Estonian Scientific Computing Infrastructure (ETAIS) was established in 2011. The consortium is led by the College of Tartu, with companions together with Tallinn University of Technology, the Institute of Chemical and Biological Physics, and the Ministry of Education and Research.
ETAIS helps the competitiveness of Estonian science and business by offering entry to state-of-the-art computing sources. These companies embody high-performance computing capability, safe knowledge administration, consumer assist, and skilled session. The first consumer communities embody bioinformatics, medication, knowledge mining, language know-how, chemistry, supplies science, local weather analysis, and physics.
At present, ETAIS serves because the official infrastructure supplier for the Estonian analysis and improvement sector and in addition delivers fashionable AI infrastructure companies to the whole Estonian public sector. As well as, ETAIS connects Estonia’s nationwide e-infrastructure with worldwide companions, most notably the EuroHPC LUMI supercomputer and the LUMI AI Factory.
ETAIS represents Estonia inside the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC) and develops the Puhuri service, a specialised useful resource administration and portal system that’s utilized in a number of nations, together with inside the LUMI supercomputing atmosphere. Moreover, ETAIS participates in tasks targeted on the event of quantum computing applied sciences and safe long-term archiving of private knowledge.
ETAIS has additionally been a founding member of the LUMI supercomputer consortium. Formally inaugurated on 13 June 2022 in Kajaani, Finland, LUMI offers researchers and entrepreneurs with entry to world-class computational sources. This allows even probably the most demanding customers – for instance, these growing superior AI fashions – to entry the capabilities required for main scientific and technological breakthroughs. As of early 2026, LUMI continues to rank among the many world’s high ten supercomputers.
Our workforce actively contributes to a number of work packages geared toward constructing and working companies on and round this distinctive computing platform.
Facilitating and securing Estonian genomic knowledge
The Estonian Biobank has established a population-based biobank encompassing greater than 200,000 people. On condition that roughly 20% of Estonia’s grownup inhabitants has enrolled within the programme, this useful resource represents a uniquely worthwhile dataset for the development of medical analysis each nationally and internationally. The info allow researchers to research variations in illness danger and variability in particular person responses to medical therapies, thereby forming a basis for the implementation of personalised medication in Estonia.
Owing to the extremely delicate nature of this knowledge, entry is supplied solely via the Safe Delicate Information Personal Analysis Surroundings (SAPU). SAPU is probably the most safe service operated by UTHPC, providing a totally remoted analysis atmosphere with complete, exception-free logging to make sure traceability and auditability when required.
Acquiring ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certification
In 2025, UTHPC was awarded ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification. This internationally recognised commonplace affirms the Centre’s dedication to sustaining the best ranges of knowledge safety and safety protocols. The certification covers all vital IT operations and companies supplied by UTHPC, guaranteeing compliance with globally recognised data safety requirements.
The certification course of concerned a complete audit of UTHPC’s data safety administration system, encompassing all features of knowledge dealing with, danger evaluation, and implementation of safety controls throughout a variety of companies. Attaining this certification demonstrates UTHPC’s dedication to safeguarding delicate analysis knowledge and sustaining operational excellence all through all service domains.
The Centre will maintain its certification via common audits and steady enhancement of safety practices, guaranteeing that its data safety administration system stays sturdy in opposition to evolving threats in each tutorial and industrial contexts.
Managing the sources
Since 2016, a part of our workforce has been concerned within the improvement of the Waldur portal, which makes entry to advanced computing sources as easy as on-line banking. The portal permits organisations to offer their customers with the instruments they want, keep budgetary management, and be certain that pricey know-how is utilised effectively.
Waldur is a key part of the EuroHPC Federation Platform (EFP), a central portal designed to combine Europe’s various supercomputing and quantum sources right into a single, safe, and user-friendly ecosystem. Inside the framework of the CASTIEL 2 and upcoming CASTIEL 3 mission, we’re liable for growing a market for the companies provided by EuroHPC Competence Centres.
All of it comes collectively via shut collaboration
Our ministries deserve recognition for his or her daring and revolutionary initiatives, which encourage, allow, and assist collaboration on tasks that will be too formidable for any single accomplice to undertake alone.
Thirty years in the past, the Tiger Leap programme was launched, offering computer systems to all colleges and laying the inspiration for Estonia’s digital success story. At present, in response to the rising challenges of uncontrolled AI use in training, a brand new programme, AI Leap, has been launched. This initiative brings collectively hundreds of academics to rethink training within the age of AI, increase AI literacy throughout society, and advance instructional practices via research-based improvement.
We imagine that initiatives resembling these, mixed with the infrastructure, experience, and collaborations described above, present the connections and data essential to ship a complete vary of companies. These companies allow the coaching of execs and the availability of instruments to make use of fashionable and future AI applied sciences independently, safely, and successfully.
Please Be aware: It is a Business Profile
Please observe, this text can even seem within the twenty fifth version of our quarterly publication.
