Europe is poised to play a pivotal role in the technological revolution, particularly in the field of edge AI, which promises sustainable growth, performance, and reliability. The NeAIxt project is a strategic initiative designed to foster European independence and control over edge AI technology, benefiting both companies and citizens. The project presents a golden opportunity for European SMEs to grow, network, and enhance skills, leveraging exposure to the global market. Research labs and RTOs will bridge the gap to the future by developing necessary technologies and competencies, while universities will cultivate and disseminate advanced skills required for this technological evolution. NeAIxt aims to solidify Europe's position in edge AI and eNVM technology by enhancing AI enablers, evolving eNVM for edge applications, and demonstrating AI capabilities at both chip and system levels. The project is committed to ensuring the safety and security of AI services, adhering to EU regulations. Key technical developments include the advancement of 18nm FD-SOI and next-generation embedded Phase Change Memory (ePCM). These innovations will lead to high-performance, secure microcontrollers with AI capabilities, offering low power consumption and high security for smart applications. The project will integrate advances in non-volatile memory technologies with cutting-edge MCU design to enable efficient in-memory computing. This synergy will deliver a fully European solution for reliable, safe, and independent edge AI applications. NeAIxt will address the entire edge AI value chain, from academia to industry, and from design to end-user applications, building on Europe's strong technological foundation. The project's outcomes will alleviate societal concerns about AI proliferation by ensuring compliance with European privacy standards, fostering AI adoption in various sectors.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Edge computing is entering a new era based on the use of ubiquitous small and connected devices. Until now, Europe has not been doing well, as America sets the standards and most components are produced in Asia or America. This project believes doing better is realized by (1) Putting European values of self-organization, privacy by design and low use of energy in the core of the Edge Computing components that shape this new era, and delivering the technology needed to promote these values; (2) Focusing on pan European cooperation to ramp up the capabilities needed to deliver these new components at a scale that can make a real impact. Europe does not have huge IT leaders so cooperation from a very early phase is key. All partners in the project participate in delivering key parts of these new Edge Computing components; and (3) Demonstrating the use of these components in key European industrial areas. Clear and early examples are needed to un-lock corporate and external funding to deliver on the promise of this very exciting project. The DAIS project will research and deliver distributed artificial intelligent systems. It will not research new algorithms, as such, but solves the problems of running existing algorithms on these vastly distributed edge devices that are designed based on the above three European core values. The research and innovation activities are organized around eight complementary and mutually supportive supply chains. Five of these focus on delivering the hardware and software that is needed to run industrial-grade AI on different types of networking topologies. Three of the supply chains demonstrate how known AI challenges, from different functional areas, are met by this pan European effort. The DAIS project consists of 48 parties from 11 different countries. The DAIS project fosters cooperation between large and leading industrial players from different domains.