Elhuyar, IKERLAN and MasOrange join the UPV/EHU Chair on Artificial Intelligence and HiTZ in Language Technology
Recently, the Elhuyar Foundation, the IKERLAN technology centre and the company MasOrange have joined the Chair of Artificial Intelligence and HiTZ in Language Technology of the University of the Basque Country.
Recently, the Elhuyar Foundation, the IKERLAN technology centre and the company MasOrange have joined the Chair of Artificial Intelligence and HiTZ in Language Technology of the University of the Basque Country.
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“The Chair allows IKERLAN to transmit to society our technological knowledge about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and we can continue to strengthen our research work in favor of applied AI”, says Josu Bilbao, Director of Digital Technologies and AI at IKERLAN. In the words of Aitzol Astigarraga Pagoaga, coordinator of Orai NLP, “It is very important for Elhuyar to be part of the Chair through its artificial intelligence center, Orai NLP, to continue researching language technologies and adapting solutions to market needs.” Elisa Perán, Director of Talent at MasOrange, highlighted that “the Chair provides us with the ideal framework to work directly with students and thus apply AI and language technologies to real problems”.
We are a private non-profit organization. We were born in 1972 with the intention of combining science and Basque. We took our first steps as a cultural association and became a foundation in 2002. In addition to the Foundation, the Elhuyar group is made up of Zubize SLU and Eleka Ingeniería Linguistica SL.
The UPV/EHU’s Artificial Intelligence and HiTZ Chair in Language Technology is part of the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA), which in turn forms part of the Digital Spain 2026 agenda. The HiTZ Chair was selected in the call for funding of university chairs focused on research, dissemination, teaching and innovation in Artificial Intelligence by the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Among the 21 chairs selected by the Ministry, it is the only one focused on language technology and the only one that will be developed in the Basque Country. Researchers from four working groups on AI at the UPV/EHU’s Faculty of Computer Science participate in the Chair (among them the Basque Centre for Language Technology HiTZ) and Avature, a pioneering company in the field of technology for the acquisition and management of talent. In addition, the Chair aims to promote collaboration between the public and private sectors in the field of AI applied to language technology.
“One of the fundamental characteristics of intelligence is the ability to communicate through natural language. Language technology is an area of Artificial Intelligence that primarily develops algorithms and systems that can understand and interpret human language. This area is creating a revolution within AI with applications that are changing society: machine translation, voice conversation systems or creative systems such as ChatGPT or Gemini. The HiTZ Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Language Technology has an ambitious program to strengthen the leadership of the University of the Basque Country in this technology, increase the AI capabilities of the affiliated companies and position the country at the technological forefront”, highlights Aitor Soroa, director of the Chair.
