The Horizon Europe project delivers AI-driven serverless platform validated across smart cities, wildfire detection, smart energy and autonomous mobility.

Madrid, Spain. January 20, 2026 — After three years of intensive research and innovation, the Horizon Europe project COGNIT (Cognitive Cloud-Edge Continuum for Serverless Applications) has successfully reached its conclusion, delivering a robust open-source framework that redefines how applications are deployed, orchestrated and optimized across the cloud-to-edge continuum.

COGNIT addresses one of today’s most pressing technological challenges: how to manage highly distributed, latency-sensitive and energy-aware applications in a secure, sovereign and sustainable way. By combining serverless computing with advanced AI-driven orchestration, the project enables dynamic placement and scaling of workloads from central clouds to edge devices, based on performance, energy efficiency and security requirements.

A Cognitive Brain for the Continuum

At the heart of COGNIT lies an AI-powered orchestrator capable of reasoning across heterogeneous infrastructures, energy availability and application behaviour. According to Prof. Paul Townend (Umeå University):

“The AI orchestrator is the brain of COGNIT. It can analyse requirements and decide in real time where in the continuum an application should execute, while reducing power consumption and maintaining performance. Initial trials achieved up to 12% energy savings while meeting all service constraints.”

This cognitive layer enables:

• Dynamic offloading of functions between cloud and edge.
• Vertical and horizontal elasticity for serverless workloads.
• Energy-aware scheduling aligned with green energy availability.
• Secure execution through a security-by-design approach.
• Operation on highly resource-constrained devices.
  

Validation Through Four High-Impact Use Cases

The platform has been validated in four demanding real-world scenarios, demonstrating its versatility and societal relevance:

• Smart Cities (ACISA – Spain)
  COGNIT optimised latency-critical services for public transport management and emergency response, ensuring rapid reaction times through intelligent function placement close to users.
• Wildfire Detection (Nature 4.0 – Italy)
  The system dynamically scaled serverless functions in response to sudden sensor data surges, while minimizing energy consumption in remote IoT deployments and enabling predictive resource planning for emergency situations.
• Smart Energy (Atende & Phoenix Systems – Poland)
  Using highly constrained smart meters, COGNIT enabled local processing and orchestration to maximise the use of renewable energy and reduce the carbon footprint of electricity distribution systems.
• Cybersecurity for Autonomous Vehicles (CETIC & SUSE Enterprise – Belgium/Germany)
  Real-time anomaly detection was deployed across mobile edge nodes, allowing compromised vehicles to be identified instantly and seamlessly migrated between computing nodes without service interruption.

Open Source, Digital Sovereignty and European Collaboration

Beyond technical excellence, COGNIT stands as a flagship example of European Digital Sovereignty and Open Innovation. As Alberto Martí, VP of Open Source Innovation at OpenNebula Systems, stated:

“For the first time, we brought together European open-source technology providers, research organisations and industrial use cases to build a sovereign serverless framework. Digital Sovereignty is not only about regulation, but about creating and adopting our own technologies, collaboratively and openly.”

All COGNIT results, including its serverless runtime and AI orchestration components, are released as open source, ensuring long-term sustainability, transparency and uptake by industry and research communities.

A Foundation for the Future Cloud-Edge Ecosystem

Reaching Technology Readiness Level 5, COGNIT delivers an integrated, validated platform that paves the way for next-generation applications in smart infrastructure, climate resilience, energy transition and autonomous systems.

Beyond the technology itself, the project also provides a concrete reference for how open, European-led collaboration can support the development of sustainable, secure and digitally sovereign infrastructures in the years to come.

ABOUT OPENNEBULA SYSTEMS:

OpenNebula Systems develops the open source cloud and edge computing platform OpenNebula, supports its Community, and provides SLA-based support, enterprise tools, consulting, and managed cloud services. OpenNebula Systems has a global presence, with offices in Europe and the US.

Check OpenNebula.io/innovation for more information.