On 10 July 2025, the ELIAS, ELLIOT, and ELSA projects co-organised a Theme Development Workshop (TDW) focused on Foundation Models in Thessaloniki, Greece. The event was hosted by the Information Technologies Institute of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH). The hybrid-format workshop brought together over 90 in-person participants and more than 120 online attendees, including AI researchers, industry professionals, and students. The four-hour event featured three thematic sessions, each spotlighting cutting-edge research, real-world applications, and critical discussions around the development and deployment of foundation models.

While the global narrative around Foundation Models—powerful, resource-intensive AI systems such as GPT-4 and DALL·E—has largely centred on technology giants, this workshop highlighted Europe’s growing momentum in developing open, community-driven alternatives, with notable advances in training, applications, and security.

Building a Collaborative Future

Interactive Q&A segments followed each talk, with discussions centred on different topics. The event concluded with a wrap-up session led by Ricci, Karatzas, and Baraldi, who emphasised the importance of cross-sectoral collaboration to ensure that foundation models are developed in ways that are safe, inclusive, and aligned with European values.

Key takeaways from participants included:

• Support for open, multilingual, and multimodal models
• Investment in European computing infrastructure to level the playing field
• Stronger integration of ethics, regulation, and societal perspectives in AI development
• The value of synthetic data and innovative training techniques to democratise access

The workshop fostered vibrant discussion and provided valuable networking opportunities, culminating in a light lunch where participants continued to exchange ideas informally.

Watch the event recording here!

Looking Ahead

This TDW marked the second in a series of thematic workshops organised by ELIAS, in collaboration with the ELLIOT and ELSA networks. It sent a clear message that Europe is not merely observing the foundation model revolution—it is actively shaping it.

Despite ongoing challenges in data availability and computational resources, Europe’s commitment to open models, responsible design, and regional relevance is yielding tangible results. Initiatives like Laion, NeoBabel, OpenCLIP, and AI Factories illustrate that a distributed, democratic AI future is not only possible—it is already underway.

This workshop was jointly organised by the ELIAS , ELLIOT & ELSA projects.

European Large Open Multi-Modal Foundation Models For Robust Generalization On Arbitrary Data Streams – ELLIOT (GA No. 101214398 ) aims to enhance general-purpose AI by developing large-scale, open multimodal foundation models with strong spatio-temporal understanding. Led by top European academic and industrial labs from the ELLIS and LAION communities, the project targets underrepresented time-relevant modalities such as industrial time series, remote sensing, and health data. Both real and synthetic data will be used, sourced from consortium partners and European Data Spaces, with synthetic data generated using current and novel generative AI methods. European HPC resources are integrated to support large-scale model training. 

European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI – ELSA (GA No. 101070617) is a growing network of excellence that spearheads efforts in foundational safe and secure AI methodology research. ELSA’s founding members include European experts in all aspects of safe and secure AI, with particular focus on technical robustness, privacy preserving techniques and human agency and oversight. In addition, ELSA brings on board research and industry experts in six different sectors that are key application areas of safe and secure AI. ELSA builds on and extends the internationally recognised and excellently positioned ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems) network of excellence.