Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA)

1. The Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives shall pursue the general objective of promoting research and innovation activities and achieving large-scale capacity throughout the Union’s cloud and AI ecosystem, by:
   1. supporting the development and deployment of cutting-edge cloud and AI technologies, including next-generation resource-efficient data centre technologies, open cloud computing stack technologies, frontier AI, and physical and industrial AI;
   2. reinforcing the Union’s data centre and cloud capacity to meet the growing demands driven by AI, foster innovation and ensure the resilience of the digital infrastructure;
   3. stimulating the Union’s demand and promoting the deployment and uptake of cloud and AI technologies across the public sector, and the private sector, in line with the digital target of digital transformation of businesses, established by Decision (EU) 2022/2481.
2. The Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives shall pursue the following operational objectives:
   1. supporting the development and deployment of advanced data centre technologies incorporating principles of energy efficiency and resource efficiency by design and throughout operations (operational objective 1);
   2. supporting the development and deployment of cloud computing stacks supporting the Union’s technological autonomy (operational objective 2);
   3. advancing Union’s capabilities in frontier AI (operational objective 3);
   4. advancing Union’s capabilities in physical AI models and systems and fostering their deployment across the Union’s strategic sectors (operational objective 4);
   5. accelerating the development and uptake of industrial AI across the Union’s strategic sectors (operational objective 5);
   6. supporting the development of advanced platforms for the large-scale deployment of AI agents (operational objective 6);
   7. increasing the development and adoption of AI models and systems across the Union’s public sectors (operational objective 7);
   8. increasing the adoption of AI technologies at regional and local level, and the uptake of cloud computing services provided by European cloud computing service providers (operational objective 8).

1. Each Member State shall establish Experience and Acceleration Centres for AI (‘Centres for AI’). Those Centres for AI shall build on the European digital innovation hubs established under Article 16 of Regulation (EU) 2021/694 and, where applicable, any successor entities established under Union law.
2. The objectives of the Centres for AI shall be to:
   1. support the integration and scaling-up of AI use cases in strategic industrial and public sectors;
   2. accelerate the broad adoption of cloud and AI technologies at regional and local levels, notably for SMEs, SMCs and public sector bodies, in line with the ‘AI first’ principle;
   3. leverage relevant infrastructure to accelerate the development and fine-tuning of AI models and systems.
3. The Centres for AI shall be tasked, in particular, with:
   1. helping organisations accelerate their digital transformation through access to and use of AI technologies, including by connecting organisations with European providers of cloud and AI technologies;
   2. ensuring or providing access to relevant upskilling and reskilling schemes, in close collaboration with the AI Skills Academy;
   3. facilitating the transfer of expertise across regions;
   4. supporting the scaling-up of spin-offs and start-ups emerging from universities, incubators and other accelerators by facilitating access to clients, companies and organisations seeking specialised AI services.
4. The Commission may adopt implementing acts detailing the procedure for establishing Centres for AI and further arrangements concerning the participant organisation profile, selection criteria and details on the implementation of the tasks and functions. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 46(2).
5. Centres for AI shall have substantial overall autonomy as regards their organisation, composition and working methods, in compliance with the objectives set out in this Regulation.
6. A network of Centres for AI shall be established to support collaboration and the exchange of best practices among Centres for AI, and to provide specialised services across regions where the required skills or compute capacity are not available locally.
7. Member States and the Commission shall cooperate with existing networks established under other Union initiatives, including Union initiatives in the field of semiconductors and data.

1. The implementation of the Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives’ operational objectives shall be entrusted to the Commission and the Member States and, where relevant, to joint undertakings or any other structures capable of achieving those objectives.
2. The Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives’ operational objectives shall be implemented through large-scale, cross-sectoral initiatives addressing major technological and industrial challenges of strategic relevance for the Union (‘grand challenges’), as indicated in Annex I.
3. The Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives may be supported by funding from Union programmes, including Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe Programme, in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2021/694 and Regulation (EU) 2021/695.
4. To reflect technological and market developments the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 45 to amend Annex I in a manner consistent with the objectives of the Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives set out in Article 4.

1. By [same day as entry into force plus one year], Member States shall establish national cloud and AI strategies (the ‘national strategies’).
2. The national strategies shall include at least the following:
   1. key objectives and priorities for cloud and AI adoption, in line with the ‘AI first’ principle, as well as a governance and monitoring framework to achieve those objectives and priorities;
   2. measures to accelerate the development and adoption of cloud and AI at national, regional and local level, particularly among public sector bodies, SMEs and SMCs, including by supporting the Centres for AI referred to in Article 5 as entry points to the European AI innovation ecosystem;
   3. measures to support the broad deployment and uptake of AI in strategic industrial and public sectors, including in healthcare, energy and mobility;
   4. measures to support the deployment of data centre capacity, with a particular focus on high-value data centres delivering significant economic and societal benefits while adhering to high environmental and energy-efficiency standards;
   5. measures to invest in high-intensity computing infrastructure, including AI factories, AI gigafactories and quantum computers as strategic national and cross-border assets supporting research, development and industrial AI deployment across strategic sectors;
   6. measures to support the development of cloud and AI capabilities and promote excellence and innovation, including through public procurement measures, and public procurement of innovation measures set out in Article 33;
   7. measures to support the development of cloud computing stack technologies built upon open hardware and software to strengthen technological sovereignty and enhance the competitiveness of strategic European industries;
   8. measures to ensure the accessibility of high-quality data for AI development, notably by preventing data bottlenecks encountered by organisations.
3. National strategies shall be consistent with the objectives of this Regulation
4. Member States shall ensure that their national strategies are consistent with, and contribute to, the associated digital targets established under Article 4 of Decision (EU) 2022/2481.
5. The Member States shall notify the Commission of their national strategies within three months of their adoption. Member States shall assess their national strategies at least every three years on the basis of key performance indicators and, where necessary, update them. The Commission shall monitor the adoption and revision of the national strategies.
6. The European Artificial Intelligence Board established by Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (the ‘AI Board’) shall advise and assist the Member States as regards the coordination of national strategies. The AI Board shall facilitate exchange of best practices among Member States.

The Commission may, by means of a decision, recognise as frontier AI priority projects, projects selected through open calls for expression of interest that support grand challenge 3 set out in Annex I, provided that the following criteria are fulfilled:

1. it is a pioneering project, focused on the support and scaling-up of frontier AI technologies;
2. it is undertaken by a European digital infrastructure consortium established pursuant Decision (EU) 2022/2481 or another legal entity eligible for funding under Union law and it involves the participation of at least three Member States;
3. the participating Member States pool computing time and other relevant resources to support the implementation of the designated project.

1. The Union and the Member States shall ensure that sufficient AI computing resources from their compute capacities are allocated to support the development of frontier AI priority projects that fulfil the criteria set out in Article 8, within the limits of available capacity.
2. The Union shall at least match the AI computing resources contributed by Member States to frontier AI priority projects to the extent that sufficient AI computing capacity is available within the Union’s share of European high performance computing access time.
3. The Union and the Member States shall endeavour to provide sufficient computing resource for AI industrial innovation, physical AI and public sector AI projects.