AI Factories in Europe
At AI Summit Adria in Pula on 5 June 2025, Tarry Singh told a room of about 200 delegates that Europe's AI factory programme is real, funded, and still too slow.
AI Summit Adria ran at Hotel Histria in Pula, Croatia, on 5 and 6 June 2025. It is the Adriatic edition of the Data Science Conference series, and it stays deliberately small: about 200 delegates and 55 speakers. The partner rail beside the stage carried the World Bank Group, True North, TIS Grupa, Infoscope, Things Solver, Yettel, SmartCat, TD SYNNEX, Eviden and Atos, with Real AI and deepkapha on the same wall.
The official opening was still on the screen at 12:38. Sixteen minutes later Tarry Singh was on stage under a title slide reading "AI Factories in Europe: Past, Present and (Precarious) Future". He started in 2010 with the Digital Agenda for Europe, moved through the Digital Single Market in 2015, the Coordinated Plan on AI in 2018 and Horizon 2020's €1.5B for AI research, then named the fault line that ran under all of it: strong foundational research, weak transfer to market.
Then the 2025 numbers. InvestAI at €200B, of which €50B is EU money and €20B is set aside for AI gigafactories. Thirteen AI factory sites selected under EuroHPC. Germany at €5B, France at €2.2B inside a €109B plan. He set those against Stargate at $500B, a $100B UAE fund, Saudi commitments near $15B, and China's stated target of a $1.4 trillion AI economy by 2030. The arithmetic was the argument.
The closing slide gave Europe three doors: lead, follow, or fade away. His reading was that the current path leads to the third, and that only unified and uncomfortable ambition changes it. He also sat for a fireside chat with Natali Delic, Chief Strategy and Digital Officer at Telekom Srbija, on reinventing telco with AI, and joined a public sector panel that put him next to the World Bank Group and the Public Policy Secretariat of the Government of the Republic of Serbia.
On the evening of 5 June the conference sailed north to the Brijuni islands, where the whole delegation stood together in an open meadow for one photograph before dinner.
Photographs by Marko Kranjc (withfirelive)
Tarry Singh on stage in front of the AI Factories in Europe title slide and the vertical rail of partner logos. 
Tarry Singh mid-sentence on stage, partner logos on the rail to his side. 
The public sector panel in conversation, four speakers seated with their names and roles on the screen behind. 
Tarry Singh gesturing on stage, his own portrait projected large on the screen behind him. 
Tarry Singh seated in an armchair with a microphone during the fireside chat, the Croatian coat of arms on the wall behind. 
Tarry Singh, back to camera, talking across to Natali Delic during the fireside chat. 
Tarry Singh with two delegates wearing DSC lanyards at the conference venue. 
Delegates seated in rows watching a slide about scaling laws, the speaker on stage at the left. 
A speaker on stage in front of a slide headed New Skills, Old Structures, with the AI Summit Adria banner along the stage front. 
Wide view of the fireside chat, both speakers seated on stage beneath the session graphic. 
The official opening of AI Summit Adria, a host alone on stage with a microphone. 
A speaker on stage beside a slide headed Continuous Executive Intelligence, delegates seated below. 
The DSC Adria card for the fireside chat Reinventing Telco with AI, naming Natali Delic of Telekom Srbija and Tarry Singh, at Hotel Histria, Pula, 5th to 6th June. 
Delegate boxes stacked on a chair, each printed with the AI Summit Adria mark.
21 slides, subtitled Past, Present and (Precarious) Future. Delivered on the main stage, 5 June 2025.
DSC Adria session card naming Natali Delic (Telekom Srbija) and Tarry Singh, printed with the venue and dates.
Sixteen frames by Marko Kranjc, shot on a Sony A7R IV and graded in Lightroom Classic.
