INSAIT is pleased to announce a new $1 million USD fund from Google, helping us deepen our commitment to open and inclusive AI research and innovation in Central and Eastern Europe. This latest support includes funding to advance INSAIT’s research mission, cloud compute resources to accelerate advanced AI projects, and investment in local outreach initiatives such as the Tech Series and educational programs like Explorer.
This contribution builds on Google’s initial support for INSAIT in 2022, which included $3 million in Google Cloud credits and two DeepMind PhD fellowships, aimed at establishing the institute as a leading hub for AI research and talent development in Bulgaria. In 2024, INSAIT was able to expand upon this work with another round of support from Google, which included more than 1M USD for training generative AI models and 1M USD dedicated to PhD fellowships, enabling further growth in research capabilities and talent development at INSAIT.
With this latest commitment, Google’s total investment in INSAIT now exceeds 6M USD. Google’s support of INSAIT is also visible through the open LLMs that INSAIT released, all of which are based on Google’s Gemma series. These include BgGPT, the first large-scale Bulgarian language model, which Google DeepMind and Google Research recognized in two blog posts – GemmaVerse and Building more inclusive LLMs using Gemma open models – highlighting the institute’s contributions to open and inclusive AI research. Another model INSAIT released is MamayLM, a state-of-the-art open model for Ukrainian, also based on the Gemma2 series.
Google’s continued support for INSAIT reflects our long-term commitment to advancing responsible AI, supporting local talent, and strengthening the AI ecosystem in Bulgaria and the region.