Optare Solutions to Manage Over €1.1M in European Technological Sovereignty and Local AI Projects

• The company is participating in the SICODI, Q-AIR, IMNEXT, and DSFV consortia, aimed at ensuring data sovereignty across sectors such as telecommunications, connected industry, defense, and maritime.
• The four initiatives mobilize a joint budget of €9.9 million under the CDTI’s INNTERCONECTA-STEP program.

Vigo, October 22, 2026. Following the final resolution granted by the Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation (CDTI) within the framework of the INNTERCONECTA-STEP call, Optare Solutions is moving forward into the development and execution phase of four new industrial research consortium projects. These consortia, backed by European funding to advance the European Union’s strategic autonomy against external technological dependencies, have an aggregate budget of €9.9 million, of which Optare will directly manage more than €1.1 million allocated to its individual R&D&I activities.

The INNTERCONECTA-STEP program addresses the need to shield Europe’s critical technological capabilities. In networks and telecommunications, this autonomy requires critical infrastructure and heavy industry to harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence without relying on third-party public clouds or compromising operational privacy. To tackle this challenge, the consortia in which Optare participates integrate everything from post-quantum cybersecurity to edge computing architectures and local AI models, designed to process sensitive information directly within the network infrastructure itself.

“The main current debate in mission-critical digitization is not just about algorithmic capability, but data sovereignty and business model viability,” states Luis Alfonso Álvarez Sestelo, CEO of Optare Solutions. “Neither telecom operators nor highly critical sectors can afford the risks of privacy, latency, or exposure to external vendors whose pricing changes based on token consumption could completely destabilize the business case. True resilience requires bringing artificial intelligence to the network edge: local models that ensure absolute data control and complete cost predictability.”

This technical roadmap is realized across four projects targeting demanding use cases:

• IMNEXT: Addresses modernization toward future networks (B5G/6G) and terrestrial-satellite integration, researching adaptive security in network slicing and the cybersecure deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) at the edge, allowing assistants and advanced analytics to run directly on telecommunications infrastructure nodes.
• DSFV (Digital Safe Fishing Vessel): Transfers these capabilities to the maritime sector to validate onboard computing architectures that ensure local processing of critical data, enabling autonomous decision-making on vessels without relying on continuous satellite connectivity.
• SICODI: Focuses on the secure automation of autonomous factories by deploying private 5G networks with Open RAN architecture, adaptive traffic control (network slicing), and satellite failover backup for real-time shop-floor decision-making.
• Q-AIR: Develops cybersecurity solutions to protect private mobile networks in mission-critical environments (defense, emergency services, and strategic infrastructure) against emerging threats using post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum communications (QKD).

Through these consortia, Optare Solutions reinforces its position as a trusted technology partner in advanced telecommunications, expanding its network software expertise into strategic environments where local computing and cybersecurity are essential to driving Europe’s digital transformation.