Tampere AI ecosystem attracts international companies

The Tampere AI ecosystem consists of 60 companies, specialized in developing artificial intelligence (AI) services or products, and organizations that harness AI in their operations.

"More than 10 new players have joined the ecosystem this year, and the development prospects are very promising," Kristian Valkama, AI Transformation Director at Business Tampere rejoices.

"Tampere has a long history of smart city development and a strong culture of co-development, where working together in ecosystems works well. It is talked about everywhere, but here, we act! A good example of this is our new Smarter Organization event series, starting in November, with 20 active ecosystem players involved."

Softlandia in significant Silicon Valley cooperation

The AI know-how found in Tampere has also become known globally. As the latest new opening, Tampere-based Softlandia and Silicon Valley-based Outerbounds Ltd started collaboration.

Outerbounds develops and maintains the Metaflow software published under an open source license, which enhances data science projects. Ilmo Lounasmaa, one of Softlandia's founding members and chairman, believes that the Metaflow for Azure integration, which improves the productivity of companies using large amounts of data, will find a wide user base in Finland.

"Finland is an old open-source country and large-scale AI projects are carried out here. The cloud environment is already widely used here, and productivity tools play an increasingly important role.”

With Metaflow for Azure, processing data and monitoring models created from data becomes easier, and building workflows in a cloud environment is simplified significantly. Metaflow is Netflix-originated for an AWS (Amazon Web Services) environment. Softlandia's special expertise is the application of Metaflow in the Azure environment and in imaging and IoT technology projects.

"Metaflow offers significant productivity potential for all business functions that handle large amounts of data, work in teams, and plan to continue doing so" Lounasmaa says.

Silo AI aims to become Europe's leading AI house

The presence of large industrial companies and the region's AI know-how also attracted Silo AI. The largest AI company in the Nordic countries set up an office in Tampere a little over a year ago. Silo AI, which employs 250 specialists, offers artificial intelligence solutions for industrial use, devices and services, as well as tools for machine vision, natural language processing and machine learning. The Finnish company, founded in 2017, has doubled its turnover every year. It has offices in the Nordic countries, Canada, and Switzerland. The goal is to develop into Europe's leading artificial intelligence company.

"Tampere was a good choice for the company's growth and development. Here, you find large industrial companies, several AI-focused actors, and a university. The cooperation works, and introducing AI is made easy. At ecosystem events, you can spread the good news of AI and meet potential partners or customers at low thresholds," Business Development Executive and Site Lead Kai Knuutila says about Silo AI's experiences.

Silo AI is currently implementing automotive industry projects in Germany and the USA, for example. "We have also been working together with other AI entities on the Nordic State of AI report, published on November 8," tips Knuutila.