IndesIA, the Spanish artificial intelligence consortium comprising eight leading Spanish companies, Repsol, Gestamp, Navantia, Técnicas Reunidas, Telefónica, Microsoft, Airbus and Ferrovial, has chosen the members of its Board of Directors to lead it for the next three years.
Chairing the project is Valero Marín (Repsol), Deputy Chair is Donato Martínez (Navantia), and Pablo de la Puente (Gestamp) has been appointed as Treasurer. They are accompanied by fellow Board members Juan Carlos García (Telefónica), José María de la Fuente (Microsoft), Marcos D. Bauer (Técnicas Reunidas), Isabel del Pozo (Airbus) and Javier Lázaro (Ferrovial).
Nuria Ávalos takes the helm as the consortium’s CEO. IndesIA also has the support of the Basque Artificial Intelligence Center (BAIC) as lead advisor, and Accenture will be the project’s Value Achievement Office to promote the implementation of its initiatives.
The consortium’s mission is to launch initiatives that help position Spain as a trend-setter in the use of data and artificial intelligence in an industrial setting, making the country an internationally recognized hub in this field. Its goals also include developing a new economy to generate growth in Spain, in a context in which the country’s industrial sector faces profound challenges.
IndesIA also aims to help Spanish industry to become more competitive, through the automation and optimization of industrial processes, while fostering sustainability throughout the value chain. In this regard, it will also foment research to develop new materials with a lower environmental impact and nurture a commitment to the circular economy.
Creating jobs and boosting training
Likewise, it will foster the transformation of employment, focusing on training junior and senior professionals in new technologies. This will reduce the existing training gap in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The goal is to generate new, highly skilled jobs and to help attract and retain technology talent in Spain.
To achieve this, it will work with public and private educational institutions to roadmap training itineraries to cover the broader knowledge that employees in the industrial sector must have, as well as to help them better understand how these solutions can improve organizations’ day-to-day activities.
Technology for all businesses
The consortium hopes to expand to reach as many industrial companies and contexts as possible in Spain and wider Europe. IndesIA’s members consider that artificial intelligence is already playing an important role at Spain’s leading companies, most of which have already set up big data or AI teams.
The leaders of this initiative, convinced of the invaluable contribution this integration can make to the growth, modernization and competitiveness of Spain’s industrial fabric, created the consortium with the intention of bringing on board small and medium-sized Spanish enterprises so as to help them in their digital transformation processes.