BERLIN, Sept 5 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Friedrich

Merz inaugurated a supercomputer powered by Nvidia ( NVDA )

chips on Friday that is the world's fourth-fastest, saying it

helps Europe catch up with the leaders in AI, the United States

and China.

"We are today witnessing a historic European pioneering

project," Merz said at the Juelich research centre in western

Germany, the site of the installation of the Jupiter

supercomputer, which was also assembled by French IT group Atos

and German modular supercomputing company ParTec

.

He said the U.S. and China were leading the race towards an

AI-driven economy, but "we in Germany and in Europe have all the

opportunities to catch up and then to hold our own".

The start of Jupiter's operations marks the first European

supercomputer of the Exascale class, mastering one billion times

one billion calculations per second, also making it the region's

fastest.

That amounts to the power of about 10 million standard

notebook computers.

European institutions are aiming to stay competitive against

the U.S. in supercomputers, used in scientific fields from

biotechnology to climate research, seeking to avoid

over-reliance on digital services from overseas.

Jupiter "will put Germany at the forefront of global

high-performance computing and improve the conditions for the

development of AI," said Ralf Wintergerst, head of digital

business association Bitkom, adding that access to it should be

made as unbureaucratic as possible for start-ups and established

companies.