Looking Back on the Gaia-X Summit 2024

November 21st, 2024

The 5th Gaia-X Summit 2024 took place in Helsinki last week, on November 14–15. With over 600 participants from more than 40 countries, the event was a true success, highlighting significant progress in Gaia-X’s mission to promote secure, interoperable, and trustworthy data space ecosystems.

The French Hub actively participated in the Gaia-X Summit and, through fruitful discussions and meetings, observed that the ecosystem is thriving and has even grown since the last Summit! We learned many things, discovered fascinating innovations, and here is a summary of the key takeaways.

A New Phase of Implementation for Gaia-X

This year, Gaia-X stood out with its confidence, legitimacy, and clear purpose. The era of debating the very existence of Gaia-X is over. This Summit was entirely focused on implementation, application, and delivering tangible results for sectors and partners in need. Numerous use cases across various sectors were showcased, with a primary focus on sector-specific applications.

Another important trend is the growing internationalization of Gaia-X. The need to build trusted data spaces is spreading across Europe, as evidenced by the establishment of new European Gaia-X Hubs in Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland. Moreover, Gaia-X’s values and principles are gaining global recognition, with participation from Japan at the Summit and the creation of a new South Korean Hub. We look forward to even more international expansions next year!

Technical Implementation

The technical track also reflected this forward momentum, with Gaia-X demonstrating operational and deployable technologies. This year featured functional, ready-to-use technical demos, showcasing solutions that only need to be adapted, deployed, and utilized. In this context, we want to emphasize that the DataSpaceLab, driven by the TeraLab platform of IMT, offers a secure environment for testing and prototyping technological possibilities while tailoring governance to the needs of data spaces, enabling rapid technology transfer.

Additionally, eight Gaia-X Digital Clearing Houses are now operational, three are under deployment, and two are in the pipeline.

Developing Business Models

A central takeaway from the Summit is the importance of demonstrating the value of data spaces and developing business models. These models often progress through various phases, creating a virtuous cycle: generating revenue quickly to attract more participants, who in turn gradually expand the overall service offering.

Training by the French Hub

While the French Hub’s videos garnered significant attention in previous years, this year, the French Hub Training Modules achieved critical acclaim among partners and other European Hubs. Feel free to explore the training modules at: https://www.gaia-x-hub.fr/formations/.

Gaia-X Labels: A Key Element of Trust

Finally, it was evident that the concept of label levels is now widely accepted by participants and has become central to discussions. Gaia-X introduces standardized compliance for cloud services, with three optional label levels ranging from Level 1 (the lowest) to Level 3 (the highest). These levels reflect varying degrees of adherence to transparency, autonomy, data protection, security, interoperability, and European control objectives. For instance, these labels, essential for trust in sensitive data use cases, are now included in the procurement requirements of major corporations such as EDF and Airbus.

The Gaia-X Summit highlighted an inspiring and enthusiastic ecosystem, driven by strong momentum and promising prospects. The French Hub is committed to doubling its efforts this year to contribute to its development!