Norway’s leading research environments in language technology are now taking an important step further into the European LLM landscape. Through UiO’s participation in OpenEuroLLM, the Language Technology Group (LTG) gains strategic access to the four largest EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI, Leonardo, Jupiter and MareNostrum5, to develop open, transparent language models for European languages, including Norwegian and Sámi.
For several years, LTG has also used national HPC resources in Norway to build open models and, more recently, to develop the experimental chatbot NorMistral 11B thinking.
Together with Sigma2, the UiO LTG group has worked in collaboration with Nordic and European partners in projects such as High Performance Language Technology (HPLT), laying the grounds for further steps such as the OpenEUroLLM project.
This kind of long-term access to powerful, shared compute, nationally and in Europe, is crucial if Norway is to build its own language technologies, safeguard digital sovereignty and ensure that Norwegian is treated equally with the official languages of EU member states.
As the national research infrastructure for advanced computing, we will continue to work closely with UiO, the National Library, NTNU and others to secure coordinated, sustainable support for Norwegian language model research.