The Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, in cooperation with the University of Tartu’s High Performance Computing Centre, have announced a major procurement for the purchase of graphics processors to increase the country’s computing capacity and accelerate the development of AI solutions.

“This is our largest server and data storage infrastructure investment to date. The hardware acquired through the procurement will boost the development and training of AI solutions locally, securely and using sensitive data,” said Ott Velsberg, Head of the AI and Data Division at the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs.

In the future, all public sector institutions can use the computing power of the procured graphics processors. “We are working to ensure that from early next year, local AI services can be used with the support of our infrastructure, thereby mitigating the risks associated with using the AI,” Velsberg added.

According to Ivar Koppel, Head of the High Performance Computing Center and the CEO of Estonian Scientific Computing Infrastructure, the servers’ computing capacity will increase tenfold by the end of the year, significantly reducing both waiting and processing times. “This means that while training a model in bioinformatics, language technology, or physics previously took two weeks, the new capacity will allow us to do it in just a couple of days,” said Koppel.

In addition to training AI models, the new capacity will benefit organisations that develop medicines, conduct customer analyses, or create Estonian language models, and anyone who requires fast computing power and data privacy. For the first time, the state will now be able to process sensitive data, which was not possible previously due to restrictions on sharing such data with third parties or transferring it out of the country.

“This is a beneficial and promising move that strengthens Estonia’s position in international research cooperation and increases our researchers’ ability to participate in EU projects and apply for grants,” said Koppel.

The public procurement is organised by the University of Tartu on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs, and its estimated value is €3.2 million. The procurement is divided into seven parts, and bids for one or more parts can be submitted until 22 September.