With over a decade-long history and a strong reputation in Europe, the Fortissimo projects (Fortissimo 1 and 2, FF4EuroHPC) were granted a budget of €42,8 million and successfully executed more than 130 experiments involving 330 partners. These efforts have resulted in 120 success stories from over 20 EU countries, where SMEs developed new products and services with the help of HPC and AI, thereby bolstering the EU economy. Building on the methods and accomplishments of the Fortissimo project series, FFplus, with a total budget of €30 million, will continue to support and empower SMEs and Start-ups towards innovation. The First FFplus Open Call for Business Experiments was a success: 19 sub-projects were selected for funding, including 43 organisations from 15 European countries.
The Second FFplus Open Call for Business Experiments is Officially Launched!
FFplus is a European initiative highlighting and promoting the adoption of High-Performance Computing (HPC) by SMEs and start-ups across Europe. The scope of the targeted actions includes both the solution of business challenges through computational methods on HPC systems and the use of supercomputing resources for the development of (generative) Artificial Intelligence (AI) software solutions and services. The computational methods encompass a large range of possibilities: modelling and simulation, data analytics, machine learning, and AI – all options empowering SMEs through enhanced innovation and competitiveness. The strategic objective is to facilitate and strengthen the technological development of European SMEs in the area of generative AI.
SMEs and Start-ups now have the opportunity to shift their innovation potential with the uptake of HPC by SMEs to solve specific business challenges of SMEs that have had no prior use of or experience with HPC services.
Main Open Call Information:
Submission deadline: August 26th, 2025 at 17:00 Brussels local time Expected duration of experiments: maximum 15 months with targeted commencement on January 1st, 2026. The indicative total funding budget for all business experiments funded under this call is €4 million. The maximum funding request per proposal is € 200,000 (covering all participants).
FFplus Open Call Webinars: Public Invited to Learn More
Two Open Call webinars will be offered to European SMEs and Start-ups, as well as organisations that might be able to support them (e.g., research institutes, universities, ISVs, and IT providers) who want to learn about the possibilities offered by FFplus to support their business innovation through the use of HPC (either through HPC uptake in a business experiment or through the exploitation of large-scale computing resources to scale their generative AI-based business perspective.
Webinars will be held on Tuesday, June 17th (at 14:00 CET), and Monday, June 23rd, 2025 (at 10:00 CET). All participants need to register here to join the webinars.
We kindly invite you to follow the FFplus LinkedIn account or to visit the project website to ensure you don't miss any important updates about the Open Call, future events, and inspiring success stories.
This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101163317. The JU receives support from the Digital Europe Programme.
