NALED: Serbia to invest 100 mln euros in AI development by 2026

BELGRADE - Serbia will invest 100 mln euros in development of artificial intelligence (AI) by 2026, Serbia's National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) announced on Thursday.

In a statement, it said a new AI development strategy until 2030 was due to provide a strategic framework for the undertaking.

The strategy will be one of the priorities of the new Serbian government, along with an accompanying action plan, and its objective is to make Serbia a regional leader in this field, NALED said.

Stefan Badza, special projects team leader at the office of the Serbian PM, said the work on the new strategy focused on ensuring more flexible regulations and facilities to companies willing to implement innovation.

He noted that ethics guidelines for AI development had been adopted in 2023 in collaboration with NALED.

"This year, we will start working on preparing legislation while keeping up with EU activities - the adoption of an AI directive, which is due in April. The plan until end-2026 is to invest 30 mln euros in another supercomputer that will be free-to-use for researchers and startups, 20 mln euros in software for the public sector, above all, in health care, energy, and transport, as well as 30 mln euros in incentives for AI development. We will make additional investments in startups since a quarter of them are developing AI solutions," Badza said.