Artificial Intelligence Action Summit: Greece in Paris🇬🇷🇫🇷🇪🇺

Greece’s Message & Europe’s Big Bet on AI

Bonjour from the City of Light!

This week, Paris becomes the global HQ for AI wonks—policy brains, tech wizards, and industry titans gathering to figure out Europe’s next AI moves while sizing up what’s happening across the Atlantic and in China.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is here at the highest level, carrying a clear vision for Europe’s AI future. And since AI policy isn’t just about regulation but about transformation, I want to share a few things about Greece’s AI playbook that you probably didn’t know. En marche!

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Greece’s AI Blueprint: From Policy to Reality

A few days ago, I mentioned that Greece now has an AI Blueprint—a roadmap for transforming the country into an AI-driven powerhouse. Six flagship projects are leading the charge, and two are already in motion.

#Flagship 1 - AI Factory: Supercomputing Powerhouse

Greece was selected as one of seven European hosts for an "AI Factory"—a next-gen supercomputing hub backed by a €1.5 billion EU investment.

At its heart? A beast of a machine named “Daedalus”, Greece’s latest supercomputer-in-the-making. When it’s fully operational, it’ll be among the top 30 most powerful supercomputers worldwide, crunching numbers at 60 petaflops (aka 60 million billion calculations per second).

Let’s put that in perspective - what the “french” do we mean by that:

🚀 If you had to manually add 2 + 2 every second, it would take 2 million years to match what Daedalus does in one second.

📚 Imagine a library containing every book ever written—this supercomputer could scan and analyze every word in less than a second.

#Flagship 2 - Global AI Ethics Forum: Greece as the Philosophical Hub

Over 2,000 years ago, Greece was the world’s problem-solving HQ—the birthplace of democracy, human rights, and the very idea of self-governance. Today, we’re channeling that spirit into AI ethics.

We’re building a Global AI Ethics Forum to shape the debate on human-centered technology. If AI is going to run parts of our lives, it better be built with values, safeguards, and foresight. Who better to lead that discussion than Greece?

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Not just talk - but quite the shop

• Greece’s ICT market has been booming lately

• Talent, capacity, and institutional support - our case for a digital Greece

  

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  The Paris Message: Not Just a Facilitator—A Disruptor

  PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been crystal clear: Europe needs to be bolder, faster, and more competitive. The old debates—innovation vs. regulation, moving forward vs. staying put, keeping things intact vs. breaking them—are obsolete.

  💡 Europe has already shown it can lead on policy. We’ve shaped the conversation on privacy, digital transparency, and AI governance. Now, we need to act—without self-imposed limitations. The world isn’t waiting for us to catch up.

  EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently announced the creation of a “28th regime”—a frictionless digital and regulatory space where European startups and scale-ups can thrive without getting bogged down by fragmented national rules.

  👉 But that’s not enough.

  Public financing won’t cut it alone. Europe needs better access to private capital. We must unlock and mobilize investments so startups can scale, compete, and lead in the global AI race.

  Governments can be disruptors—if they dare to . We are at an inflection point, where we can reimagine the modern state through AI and digital governance.

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  How Greece is Already Doing It

  🔥 Fighting Tax Evasion with AI
  Greece is deploying AI-driven systems to streamline audits on high-risk tax filings, large estates, and undisclosed offshore assets.

  By 2025, these digital tools are projected to recover an extra €500 million, bringing Greece’s total tax enforcement windfall to €2.3 billion.

  🌲 AI-Powered Wildfire Detection
  Greece is using AI and real-time imaging tech to catch wildfires before they spread.

  🚨 Drones and radar-equipped signal towers send alerts to the Fire Brigade, detecting over 100 wildfires in summer 2024 alone. This system is already saving lives, landscapes, and billions in damages.

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  Final Thought: Time to Run Through Walls

  The world is moving at breakneck speed. This isn’t a wake-up call—it’s a reality check. Europe needs to stop tiptoeing and start breaking barriers. If we crack a few things along the way, so be it. Some things are meant to be broken—like outdated mindsets, bureaucratic inertia, and regulatory handcuffs.

  Greece is here in Paris with clarity, urgency, and action.

Have a great Sunday - and see you soon 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷