Thales Unveils cortAIx: Europe’s Premier AI Accelerator for Critical Applications

Thales Unveils cortAIx: Europe’s Premier AI Accelerator for Critical Applications

(IN BRIEF) Thales, a leading European high-tech company in civil and defense sectors, announces the launch of cortAIx, an AI accelerator. cortAIx aims to equip armed forces, aircraft manufacturers, and critical infrastructure operators with secure and efficient AI solutions. Thales integrates AI into critical systems to enhance data analysis and decision-making. The initiative underscores Thales’s commitment to innovation and security across various sectors, including defense, aerospace, cybersecurity, and digital identity.

(PRESS RELEASE) LA DÉFENSE, 28-Mar-2024 — /EuropaWire/ — Thales (EPA: HO), a French multinational company active in the aerospace, defence, transportation and security markets, proudly announces the launch of cortAIx. This groundbreaking initiative consolidates Thales’s AI expertise in research, sensors, and systems, underscoring the company’s commitment to revolutionizing data analysis and decision support across critical infrastructure.

cortAIx serves as an indispensable AI accelerator, empowering armed forces, aircraft manufacturers, and critical infrastructure operators with secure solutions tailored to their specific needs. By prioritizing cybersecurity, embeddability, and frugality, cortAIx ensures efficient data processing without compromising on safety or reliability.

Backed by over 600 AI experts and a network of esteemed industry, startup, and academic partners, Thales has been at the forefront of ethical and transparent AI development for over a decade. As Europe’s leading patent applicant in AI for critical applications, Thales has seamlessly integrated AI into over a hundred products and services, solidifying its reputation as a trusted innovator.

The evolving landscape of the defense sector demands agile solutions to manage the influx of battlefield data. Leveraging advancements in civilian applications like personal assistants and video analysis, Thales continues to incorporate AI into critical systems, enabling customers to navigate complex environments with confidence.

Patrice Caine, Chairman and CEO of Thales, emphasized the company’s commitment to innovation, stating, “Our company, which is a European leader in the fields of civil and defence high-tech, is able to draw on its mastery of AI and on the assets that are its strength: its technological expertise, its knowledge of critical domains – defence and aerospace, space, cybersecurity, digital identity – and its management of constrained environments. Thales is already developing embeddable, frugal, trusted, explainable and secure end-to-end solutions, and today it is moving to the next level by acquiring major AI capabilities, that meet the security and sovereignty needs of our customers.”

cortAIx: Accelerating AI Across Critical Sectors

At the fourth edition of Thales Media Day, the company introduced cortAIx as the premier AI accelerator designed to drive integration across all sectors of activity. Key components include:

• cortAIx Lab: Europe’s foremost integrated lab for critical AI, based in Saclay, fostering collaboration within the innovation ecosystem.
• cortAIx Factory: Thales’s AI technology hub streamlining the development and industrialization of AI tools and use cases for system data. From mission planning to air traffic management, AI enhances performance and expedites decision-making.
• cortAIx Sensors: Leveraging AI capabilities in defense sensors, Thales offers enhanced precision and efficiency in threat detection, meeting stringent size, weight, power, and resilience requirements.

Ensuring Cybersecure AI

In response to AI security threats, Thales pioneers rigorous assessment methods at its Toulouse-based CESTI laboratory, certified by ANSSI. Drawing upon a vast pool of cybersecurity expertise, Thales delivers tailored solutions to mitigate vulnerabilities and safeguard critical systems.

Trusted AI in Critical Systems

From maritime patrol aircraft to air defense radars, Thales integrates AI into a range of solutions to streamline operations and enhance situational awareness. Notable advancements include real-time analysis of optronics images, AI-enabled air traffic control, and improved sound quality in radio communications for armed forces.

Trusted AI, which is incorporated into these sensor technologies, lightens operators’ workloads and speeds up the detection, identification and classification of objects of interest and target scenes:

1. The Talios pod is designed for air reconnaissance and targeting missions, and is to be found on board Dassault Aviation’s Rafale fighter jet. Until now, the images collected by the pod were analysed on the ground, but thanks to the Thales Neural Processor, the optronics images captured in flight will be analysed in real time, and 100 times quicker, by embedded AI.
2. With its Friendly Hacking unit, Thales provides its development teams with the ability – hitherto unseen in the industry – to submit their AI-based solutions to a cyber crash-test, with the aim of strengthening considerably the cybersecurity of systems that implement AI.
3. AI on board maritime patrol aircraft’s AirMaster surveillance radars enables ever-greater quantities of data to be analysed, and targets to be classified in a few tenths of a second.
4. Thales’ air defence radars perform remarkably well in detection at very low altitude. AI will provide significant help to operators in identifying small targets.
5. AI in air traffic control systems will enable the optimisation of the sequencing of aircraft on the approach paths to airports, thus contributing to a reduction in their carbon footprint.
6. AI will make the coordination of multi-drone and multi-robot systems easier. The controlled and secure autonomy of these systems will significantly reduce pressure on operators.
7. Using an innovative human-machine interface coupled with AI, helicopter pilots will be able to not only prepare tactical missions much quicker, but also to change them in flight, which had until now been impossible. Pilots will remain in charge of the choice of trajectory depending on the mission objective, whilst minimising their cognitive workload.
8. AI in radios for armed forces improves sound quality in noisy environments. It has been designed to be embdedded in a miniature chip that ensures that the autonomy of equipped devices is maintained.

About Thales

Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global leader in advanced technologies within three domains: Defence & Security, Aeronautics & Space, and Digital Identity & Security. It develops products and solutions that help make the world safer, greener and more inclusive.

The Group invests close to €4 billion a year in Research & Development, particularly in key areas such as AI, quantum technologies, Edge computing, 6G and cybersecurity.

Thales has 81,000* employees in 68 countries. In 2023, the Group generated sales of €18.4 billion.

*These figures exclude the ground transportation business, which is being divested

Media contacts:

Marion Bonnet,
Press and social media manager, Security and Cyber
+33 (0)6 60 38 48 92
marion.bonnet@thalesgroup.com

Head of Media Relations
cedric.leurquin@thalesgroup.com

SOURCE: Thales