Telefonica partnered with five major corporations in Spain to create the country’s first consortium dedicated to development of AI in the industrial sector, a move designed to stimulate economic growth.

The operator joined Microsoft, energy company Repsol, automotive engineering business Gestamp, shipbuilder Navantia and engineering operation Tecnicas Reunidas to set up IndesAI, a group looking to promote the use of data and AI among Spanish industrial businesses. The goal is to position the country as a leader in developing relevant services, but it will also have a wider European outlook.

Key focuses will be on identifying industrial use cases, promoting collaboration across different ecosystems, creating large-scale interoperable industrial data platforms and pushing agreements to simplify access to technologies including 5G, IoT and the cloud.

In total, more than 60 use cases based on AI and data analytics have been identified across energy, automotive, naval, telecoms and engineering sectors.

Challenges
More than 100 small- and mid-sized businesses are already in the process of joining the consortium, with the goal to integrate the AI and data technology throughout the value chain in their operations to accelerate digitalisation moves.

The consortium explained Spain’s industry sector currently faces a number of important challenges, with a need for it to become more competitive through automation and optimising industrial processes.

It added it will also look to improve sustainability through energy efficiency and developing new materials with a lower environmental impact, all of which the group expects can be possible through scaling the use of data and AI.