With the recently started project LEAM, another lighthouse project for high performance European digital ecosystems and AI innovation has started. The session with Ernst Stöckl-Pukall and Henrik Schunk, moderated by Andreas Weiss at the TechRiders Festival on 3 July 2025, showed the relevance of 8ra and Manufacturing-X to scale AI, supported by LEAM deliverables. LEAM demonstrates how open-source technology can foster secure and sovereign AI models, scalable digital infrastructure, and industry business cases in Europe.