PHAROS AI Factory, Greece’s national ecosystem for accelerating Artificial Intelligence innovation, participated in the Greeks in AI Symposium 2026, held on 15-17 July 2026 at the Eugenides Foundation in Athens. The annual symposium brought together Greek AI researchers, scientists and industry professionals from around the world to foster collaboration, exchange knowledge and strengthen Greece’s AI ecosystem.
Representing PHAROS, Dimitris Katsianis, Assistant Professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and Deputy Chairman of GRNET, and Vassilis Katsouros, Director of the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP) at the Athena Research Center, participated in the “Open Sovereign AI Models” session, part of the AI & Industry workshop held on the opening day of the symposium. Organised by the Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) and chaired by Petros Stefaneas (NTUA), the panel brought together experts to discuss Europe’s strategy for building open, trustworthy and technologically sovereign Artificial Intelligence.
During his intervention, D. Katsianis emphasised the importance of ensuring broad and affordable access to advanced AI computing infrastructures for researchers. He highlighted the role of the DAEDALUS supercomputer, the PHAROS AI Factory and PHAROS S.A. in strengthening Greece’s national AI ecosystem, while underlining GRNET’s role as the national infrastructure provider and hosting entity supporting these strategic initiatives. He also presented the EUNOMIA.AI project, which brings together 33 organisations from 14 European countries to develop Generative AI solutions for the public sector. The initiative will deliver at least 15 use cases covering administrative processes, legal knowledge exploitation, digital assistants and multimodal automation, contributing to the modernisation of public services, strengthening European digital sovereignty and supporting the development of trustworthy AI aligned with the principles of the AI Act.
V. Katsouros highlighted Europe’s ongoing efforts to advance sovereign AI through strategic public investments in advanced computing infrastructures, specialised human capital and data suitable for the development and deployment of AI applications. He emphasised the importance of establishing a European approach to AI training data that respects creators’ rights while ensuring fair compensation through collective management organisations. He also referred to Greece’s participation in the Alliance for Language Technologies European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (ALT-EDIC) and the development of the European Language Data Space (LDS). Highlighting Greece’s growing role in the European AI landscape, he noted that investments in the DAEDALUS supercomputer and the PHAROS AI Factory are positioning the country at the forefront of Europe’s AI infrastructure, creating the conditions for the development of technologically sovereign and trustworthy AI solutions.
Through its participation in the symposium, PHAROS AI Factory reaffirmed its commitment to advancing Europe’s AI ecosystem by fostering collaboration across academia, industry and the public sector, while supporting the development of open, trustworthy and sovereign Artificial Intelligence powered by next-generation computing infrastructures.
For more information about the event, visit the Greeks in AI Symposium website here. You can also watch the full recording of the “Open Sovereign AI Models” session here.
