With one of Europe’s fastest supercomputers and a UNESCO-backed AI research hub, Slovenia is stepping onto the global stage with a bold message: ethical innovation can come from small places.
At first glance, Slovenia’s AI revolution seems improbable. With just over two million people and limited industrial heft, the country doesn’t fit the profile of a tech superpower. Yet within a compact triangle formed by Ljubljana, Maribor, and Trbovlje, an ecosystem is quietly emerging—one that may reshape how Europe thinks about artificial intelligence, ethics, and innovation.
At the heart of this transformation are two pillars: the Vega supercomputer, a machine of continental rank; and the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), a UNESCO-affiliated hub devoted to ensuring AI serves humanity, not just capital. Together, they represent not just computational muscle or research excellence, but a national vision: to lead in the only way a small country can—by being smarter, faster, and more principled.
The Vega Effect
Housed at the Institute of Information Science (IZUM) in Maribor, the Vega supercomputer is Slovenia’s most high-profile contribution to European digital infrastructure. Commissioned in 2021 as part of the EU’s EuroHPC initiative, Vega performs at nearly seven petaflops, placing it among the top-tier high-performance computing systems in Europe.
Its processing power fuels a vast range of research fields—climate modelling, cancer genomics, materials science—and increasingly, AI. More than just a data engine, Vega serves as a magnet for scientific collaboration. Regional universities, biotech startups, and environmental institutes now tap into its capacity, giving Slovenia an edge as a digital convenor.
“Infrastructure matters,” says Dr. Domen Mongus, a computational scientist at the University of Maribor. “But what sets Vega apart is not just raw performance—it’s the ecosystem we’re building around it: cloud access, open data, ethical frameworks.”
Ethics at the Core: IRCAI in Ljubljana
If Vega represents power, IRCAI stands for conscience. Based at the Jožef Stefan Institute and formally established under UNESCO’s patronage, IRCAI (International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence) is Slovenia’s intellectual export to the world. Its mandate: to align AI with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Unlike many research labs focused on frontier tech, IRCAI is unapologetically political—in the best sense. It produces global policy recommendations, pilots social-impact projects in Africa and Latin America, and advises governments on building ethical AI infrastructures.
According to Dr. Marko Grobelnik, one of the Centre’s leading voices, this is where Slovenia can lead:
“We’re not trying to compete with Silicon Valley or Beijing. But we can show how AI can be useful, democratic, and locally accountable.”
In practice, this means pilot projects using AI to detect misinformation, optimize water usage in agriculture, or support early-warning systems for natural disasters. In late 2024, IRCAI also launched an AI & Climate Toolkit for small municipalities, now being piloted across Central and Eastern Europe.
“We’re not trying to compete with Silicon Valley — but we can show how AI can be democratic, useful, and locally accountable.”
— Dr. Marko Grobelnik, Jožef Stefan Institute
“Language is infrastructure. If we want inclusive AI, it must reflect our idioms, our syntax, our culture.”
— Dr. Andrej Škraba, Computational Linguist
“What sets Vega apart is not just performance. It’s the ecosystem we’re building around it.”
— Dr. Domen Mongus, University of Maribor
“The future of AI isn’t just about speed. It’s about who benefits — and who’s left behind.”
— IRCAI Policy Memo, 2024
Language, Data, and Local Intelligence
One of the trickiest challenges in global AI adoption is linguistic inequality. While English dominates the digital commons, smaller languages are often ignored in large-scale model training. Slovenia is actively addressing this through the development of GaMS 1B—a generative AI model trained specifically on Slovene, Croatian, and English.
Developed by a cross-institutional team and hosted on the Hugging Face platform, GaMS 1B leverages open-source architecture (OPT from Meta) but integrates regional linguistic structures. Its tokenizer is optimised for Slavic-language syntax, making it one of the first models to treat Slovene as more than an afterthought.
“Language is infrastructure,” says Dr. Andrej Škraba, a computational linguist involved in the project. “If we want AI to be inclusive, it must reflect our languages, our idioms, our cultural assumptions.”
In a region where language is often a marker of identity and tension, GaMS 1B could also serve as a quiet instrument of collaboration.
Innovation from the Ground Up
Slovenia’s AI push isn’t just coming from government labs or supercomputing centres. Local firms like Amebis, founded in the early 1990s, have laid the groundwork for natural language processing and digital dictionaries. Their flagship platform, Termania, remains the largest terminological portal in Slovenia, feeding into educational AI tools and public databases.
Meanwhile, cities like Trbovlje, once synonymous with coal and decline, are being rebranded as tech hubs. The Katapult accelerator, located in a former mining town, is now home to robotics startups and AI-assisted manufacturing pilots.
These stories don’t make headlines globally—but collectively, they tell a powerful narrative: that digital transitions can happen outside megacities and billion-dollar unicorns.
They can happen in post-industrial towns with bold mayors, in small nations with long-term thinking.
| Resource | Description |
|---|---|
| Vega Supercomputer | 6.9 petaflops; part of EuroHPC network; based in Maribor |
| IRCAI | UNESCO-affiliated AI centre promoting ethical AI for Sustainable Goals |
| GaMS 1B | Slovenia’s first large language model trained on Slovene, Croatian, English |
| Amebis | Leading language tech company; maintains Termania dictionary portal |
| Katapult Accelerator | Innovation hub in Trbovlje supporting AI startups and robotics |
Barriers and Balancing Acts
Of course, there are challenges. Slovenia still faces a brain drain, with top engineers and researchers regularly poached by foreign universities and tech giants. Public-private collaboration remains uneven, and there are concerns that AI adoption in sectors like healthcare or education is lagging behind rhetoric.
Funding, too, is uncertain. Much of Slovenia’s digital transformation has been buoyed by EU instruments like Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, and EuroHPC. The next test will be sustaining momentum as these grants taper off. And then there’s the geopolitical dimension: Slovenia’s AI ethics model—slow, inclusive, regulation-heavy—stands in stark contrast to American speed or Chinese scale. Can it compete?
That may not be the point.
Slovenia’s Advantage
In a global race driven by scale, Slovenia is offering something else: a model of precision, responsibility, and democratic design. It won’t dominate AI headlines, but it might shape how smaller countries engage with one of the most transformative forces of our time. The question now isn’t whether Slovenia is building the future. It’s whether the rest of the region is ready to follow.
Slovenia’s Key AI & Supercomputing Assets
Slovenia’s AI Strategy at a Glance
Focus: Human-centric AI, ethics, sustainability
Global Positioning: AI for SDGs and digital democracy
EU Partnerships: Horizon Europe, EuroHPC, Digital Europe
Risks: Brain drain, fragmented public-private collaboration
