MUNICH, Feb. 14, 2026 – In a significant move to strengthen Europe's technological independence, Embedded LLM, a prominent provider of large language model inference technology, has officially launched the EU AI Grid at the Munich Cyber Security Conference. This innovative initiative treats artificial intelligence as a critical utility, akin to electricity, designed to be metered, governed, and delivered through local infrastructure to ensure that jobs and economic benefits remain within European borders.
A Sovereign Approach to AI Infrastructure
Ghee Leng Ooi, Founder of Embedded LLM, emphasized the strategic importance of infrastructure ownership during the launch. "It doesn't matter who built the car," Ooi stated. "What matters is who owns the road. When you own the infrastructure, the engineering roles, the operations jobs, and the economic value stay with you." This philosophy underpins the EU AI Grid, which operates as a federated network of locally owned AI infrastructure nodes, mirroring the decentralized structure of Europe's energy grids.
Local Deployment and Economic Retention
The first deployment of the EU AI Grid commenced on January 22, 2026, at Telecentras in Vilnius, Lithuania. This model enables local operators to hire regional teams, establish local pricing structures, and retain revenue within their communities. Paulius Kuncinas, Executive Partner at Embedded LLM Europe, highlighted the grid's role in job creation, noting, "We built the traffic rules with the EU AI Act, but we didn't build the roads. The EU AI Grid is that road—and roads create jobs everywhere they are built."
Addressing Current Economic Disparities
Currently, the AI economy often disadvantages Europe, as foreign providers establish data centers on European soil, consume local energy resources, and leave carbon footprints, only to sell intelligence back to European businesses at inflated prices. The EU AI Grid aims to reverse this dynamic by empowering local operators to manage infrastructure, employ regional workforces, and keep economic value within Europe, from Vilnius and Berlin to Rome.
Expansion and Strategic Partnerships
The grid is already expanding beyond Lithuania, with plans to extend to Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Italy. The launch event featured Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defence and Space, who underscored the urgent need for operational AI capabilities to safeguard Europe's information environment. "We as Europeans would never accept a situation where a hostile aircraft could enter our airspace undetected for days," Commissioner Kubilius remarked. "But today, coordinated AI-driven narrative operations can move through our information environment without triggering any comparable alert or response. Security requires operational capabilities, not just rules."
About Embedded LLM
Embedded LLM is an AI infrastructure company with teams in Singapore, Taiwan, and Vilnius, Lithuania. As a leading contributor to vLLM, the world's most widely deployed open-source LLM inference engine, the company develops TokenVisor, a commercial platform that transforms GPU infrastructure into a metered, governed AI service for enterprises and governments. The launch at the Munich Cyber Security Conference on February 12, 2026, included remarks from former European Commissioner Gunther Oettinger and was moderated by Oliver Rolofs.
