12% of companies use it and increase turnover by 9%

The Basque Country wants to become an international benchmark in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), and the Basque government believes that steps are being taken to achieve this goal. The Minister of Industry, Energy Transition and Sustainable Development Miquel Jauregui presented this Wednesday the first diagnosis of artificial intelligence, which confirms that 12.2% of Basque companies currently use AI in their processes and that 7,500 workers are involved in these systems. These companies increased their turnover by 9%. A fact that shows that AI is “an opportunity for the Basque industry to become more competitive,” the adviser said. “We will work to become the protagonists of this unprecedented industrial revolution,” he added.

“When we talk about industrial growth and improvement, we also mean bringing tools like AI into our economic structure to put ourselves at the forefront of reindustrialization in Europe,” Jauregui said. And this process of providing tools will form the basis of the next Action Plan for Artificial Intelligence in Euskadi, which the Basque government will present in the first half of 2025 and the first step of which will be the diagnosis presented on Tuesday, which is a kind of photograph of the sector that shows: how is it going » Euskadi in this area and prepared by the Basque Artificial Intelligence Center (BAIC). Jauregui acknowledged that the development of AI will have to be accompanied by a parallel growth of new infrastructure and the pursuit of maximum energy efficiency, since artificial intelligence is electrically intensive and will require more energy consumption.

Together with a consultant who also heads BAIC, this X-ray was presented by Nerea Aranguren, General Manager of the Machine Tools and Industrial Automation Division of Mondragón Corporation and Vice President of BAIC, and Laura Marron, General Director of this center. . The study’s findings show that currently 12.2% of Basque companies are using artificial intelligence technologies in Euskadi – in 2023 the figure was just over 9% – which shows that this figure is growing, but “there is still a wide range of room for growth “, although these percentages are slightly higher than in the rest of the state and very similar to the European Union figures. However, they stressed that this is an average and that AI is being researched in a wide variety of fields, so the percentage varies across sectors. For example, in professional, scientific and technical activities the percentage reaches 25%, and in information. and the communications sector – 24%.

What is clear at BAIC is the economic impact of use, as “the turnover of companies providing artificial intelligence solutions reached 105 million euros, while user companies saw an average increase of 9% in their revenues from the implementation of artificial intelligence technologies. ” they noted. Regarding the impact on employment, “more than 7,500 professionals work in the field of artificial intelligence in Euskadi, representing 0.7% of the active population. Of these, 17% are dedicated to research and the remaining 83% are integrated into the business sector.”

There are currently six high-performance computing (HPC) centers, with an additional supercomputer set to be added in 2026, with the ultimate goal of “strengthening Euskadi’s ability to lead artificial intelligence projects,” as well as another quantum computing center to begin in 2025 . Likewise. The diagnostics identified eight public or semi-public data centers in Euskadi and 13 private enterprises that provide their infrastructure to third parties through the provision of services. Finally, the Basque Country has 8 laboratories on site dedicated to the field of artificial intelligence.

In terms of training, they emphasized the need to attract more people specializing in this growing field. Euskadi currently has over 35 regulated programs with a total training duration of over 34,000 hours. This means that more than 900 graduates are graduating each year specializing in artificial intelligence. In addition, there are many non-formal education programs. BAIC’s diagnosis is based on the need to expand learning not only in terms of technical concepts, but also the ethical values ​​that must be present when using AI, which is why they believe it is necessary for reflection. on each specific use of these technologies, so that their use is not expanded without finding out why. In this sense, Jauregui noted that Euskadi should be based on the EU code and that “it is not about doing it faster, but about doing it well.”