On December 18, 2020, TechQuartier, the Hessen Ministry for Economic Affairs, State of Hessen and 11 project partners announced the funding of a new project for the Financial Big Data Cluster, FBDC, which is part of European the GAIA-X initiative.
The project’s consortium partners will invest around 6 million Euros. An additional 10 million Euros was awarded after TechQuartier and the partners won the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs Innovation Competition “Artificial intelligence as a driver for economically relevant ecosystems.”
Tarek Al-Wazir, Hessen Minister for Economic Affairs, Energy, Transport and Housing: The federal funding of around 10 million € is a further milestone in the implementation of the project. We are creating the basis for Big Data and AI research applications to fundamentally strengthen the innovation ecosystem in the Frankfurt financial sector.
The project starts in January 2021 and is the first of its kind in Europe. This new cloud-based platform will provide access to sovereign financial data infrastructure and will allow traditional European financial institutions, FinTech companies, public stakeholders and research institutions to share necessary information developed to strengthen innovation. The project will also promote data-driven business models in the financial sector throughout Europe.
Dr. Sebastian Schäfer, Managing Director of TechQuartier: Since data is a highly valued commodity of the digital age, we need to ensure the competitiveness of German and European companies and research institutions by giving them safe access to reliable and clean financial data.
In addition to TechQuartier as the leader of the funding project, the consortium partners include many members of Frankfurt Main Finance. Among them: Deloitte, Deutsche Börse Group, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen and Refinitiv.
The full press release can be found here.
Image: /Pixabay
