The consortium consists of SEB, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Saab, and Wallenberg Investments. The companies will build a system operated by a joint Swedish company to offer sovereign and secure compute access to consortia members.
“Investing in cutting-edge AI infrastructure is a crucial step toward accelerating the development and adoption of AI across Swedish industry. We believe this initiative will generate valuable spillover effects – by enabling upskilling, fostering new collaborations, and strengthening the broader national AI ecosystem,” says Marcus Wallenberg, chair of Wallenberg Investments and SEB.
The intention is that the first phase of the deployment will use Nvidia’s latest generation super scalable technology, making it the largest enterprise AI supercomputer in Sweden once operational. It will be used to run compute-heavy AI workloads, speeding up processes such as training domain-specific AI models and large-scale inference, including reasoning AI.
“As electricity powered the industrial age and the Internet fuelled the digital age, AI is the engine of the next industrial revolution. Through the visionary initiative of Wallenberg Investments and Sweden’s industry leaders, the country is building its first AI infrastructure – laying the foundation for breakthroughs across science, industry, and society, and securing Sweden’s place at the forefront of the AI era," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.
The initiative aims to establish a next generation AI compute infrastructure that is both a production facility and a reference installation, unlocking new possibilities for AI adoption.
Strategically important for SEB
AI is central to SEB's ambition to power the customer offering, drive productivity enhancement, and future proof the bank.
“We will accelerate AI deployment across SEB to enable strategic leaps in our service to customers and to drive innovation in productivity and speed of delivery. Joining this consortium is a strategically important step on this journey as it secures access to critical infrastructure. AI is re-shaping the financial industry and we want to be at the forefront of that change,” says Jonas Ahlström, Chief Operating Officer & Deputy President & CEO at SEB.
He continues:
“Having access to cutting-edge AI resources and compute power in Sweden and being part of the design of this infrastructure is an important component in preparing the bank for the future. Our co-operation with external partners, including public cloud providers, continues and we view an ecosystem approach as key in achieving our AI ambitions.”