Telefonica creates Spanish AI consortium

The IndesIA consortium has been formed by O2 owner Telefonica and Microsoft alongside four other major Spanish companies, to “develop AI and machine learning” with applications in sectors including car manufacturing and ship building.

Automotive firm Gestamp, ship builder Navantia, engineering firm Técnicas Reunidas and energy firm Repsol will work alongside Telefonica and Microsoft to create “a large-scale interoperable industrial data platform”.

A spokesperson for the consortium said: “The platform will accelerate data ingestion by working with the leading suppliers of industrial hardware and software to develop connectors that will guarantee real-time data capture of the activities of the various companies involved.

“The aim is that this will lead to the creation of open ‘data lakes’ with aggregate and reliable data, ready for a wide array of applications in developing artificial intelligence solutions. The platform will also serve to encourage the design and creation of models of data and universal semantic layers that foster the interoperability of data among industry sector companies.”