JUPITER at Germany's Forschungszentrum Jülich has become Europe's first exascale supercomputer, crossing 1 quintillion calculations per second to power research from climate modeling to drug discovery.
The milestone supports Europe's push for technological sovereignty, with EU-backed researchers saying Europe and Japan are building an alternative high-performance computing ecosystem to reduce reliance on US-led AI and chip dominance.
Since 2024, the three-year HANAMI collaboration has linked European and Japanese teams to improve a key bottleneck: making scientific results reproducible and trustworthy across different supercomputer hardware and software architectures.
That work is expanding into AI-for-science and medical uses, including simulations of airflow inside the human nose, as Europe and Japan deepen research ties after concluding talks in late 2025 on Japan joining Horizon Europe.
JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, was officially inaugurated on September 5, 2025, at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. Its debut on the June 2025 TOP500 list immediately placed it at No. 4 worldwide, making it the most powerful and energy-efficient system in Europe. This milestone solidified Europe’s position in the global supercomputing landscape, highlighting advanced technological capabilities and a shift in the global balance of supercomputing power. JUPITER demonstrates Europe’s ability to develop and deploy cutting-edge infrastructure, marking a new era for scientific research and technological independence.