MUMBAI: Europe’s streets are getting smarter—and not just with electric cars and bike lanes. In a move that promises to give urban infrastructure a digital edge, Milestone Systems has teamed up with Nvidia and European cloud provider Nebius to launch Project Hafnia in Genoa, Italy. The initiative aims to fine-tune AI tools that manage traffic, improve public safety and ultimately make cities think on their feet—or wheels.

After kicking off in the United States, Project Hafnia has now officially arrived in Europe, bringing with it a data-rich platform that trains visual language models (VLMs) using real and synthetic video inputs. These models can map visual footage to text-based insights, allowing AI systems to not only recognise but also describe what they see. From traffic snarls to security alerts, this machine vision could soon become a city planner’s best friend.

“I’m proud that with Project Hafnia we are introducing the world’s first platform to meet the EU’s regulatory standards, powered by Nvidia technology. With Nebius as our European cloud provider, we can now enable compliant, high-quality video data for training vision AI models — fully anchored in Europe. This marks an important step forward in supporting the EU’s commitment to transparency, fairness, and regulatory oversight in AI and technology — the foundation for responsible AI innovation”, said Milestone CEO Thomas Jensen.

Project Hafnia has become one of the first real-world use cases of the Nvidia Omniverse Blueprint for Smart City AI. Milestone is also expanding its data platform with Nvidia Cosmos to blend real-world footage with synthetic video for better training outcomes. All of it is built to comply with Europe’s gold-standard frameworks like GDPR and the AI Act.

The initiative’s debut product is a European-trained VLM, developed using responsibly sourced transportation data from Genoa. This model supports video search and summarisation using Nvidia’s AI stack and GPU-optimised infrastructure. It’s all part of Milestone’s goal to fuse regulatory integrity with technical prowess.

"AI is achieving extraordinary results, unthinkable until recently, and the research in the area is in constant development. We enthusiastically joined forces with Project Hafnia to allow developers to access fundamental video data for training new Vision AI models. This data-driven approach is a key principle in the Three-Year Plan for Information Technology, aiming to promote digital transformation in Italy and particularly within the Italian Public Administration”, said City of Genoa information systems officer Andrea Sinisi.

To ensure that the data stays within EU borders, Milestone has roped in Nebius to handle cloud infrastructure. As an EU-based provider, Nebius delivers the GPU muscle required to run large-scale training while maintaining complete compliance with European sovereignty requirements.

“Project Hafnia is exactly the kind of real-world, AI-at-scale challenge Nebius was built for”, said Nebius CBO Roman Chernin. “Supporting AI development today requires infrastructure engineered for high-throughput, high-resilience workloads, with precise control over where data lives and how it’s handled. From our EU-based data centres to our deep integration with Nvidia’s AI stack, we’ve built a platform that meets the highest standards for performance, privacy and transparency”.

While Genoa serves as the testing ground, Milestone’s framework is built to scale across cities and sectors. The VLMs and datasets will be licensed to local governments through controlled access, ensuring ethical, transparent AI adoption that stays rooted in legal and cultural reality.

From streetlights to silicon, Europe’s cities may soon run not just on power—but on vision.