EU launches AI Gigafactories initiative to unlock €30bn investment

The European Union has launched a call for tenders to establish up to seven AI Gigafactories across Europe, in a major step towards strengthening the bloc’s artificial intelligence capabilities and technological sovereignty.

Backed by up to €10 billion in EU and national funding, the initiative is expected to unlock more than €30 billion in total investment, including at least €20 billion from the private sector, to significantly expand Europe’s AI computing infrastructure.

The AI Gigafactories form a key pillar of the EU’s ambition to become the “AI Continent”, providing the computing power needed to train, fine-tune and deploy next-generation AI models while ensuring they are developed on European infrastructure and in line with EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics.

The facilities will combine advanced AI processors, cloud and software technology, high-speed connectivity and energy-efficient data centres. Together with Europe’s existing network of 19 AI Factories, they are intended to strengthen the continent’s competitiveness, resilience and strategic autonomy in artificial intelligence.

The infrastructure will be available to a broad range of users, including start-ups, scale-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, large industrial organisations, researchers, universities and public authorities.

The European Commission said the initiative is designed to ensure Europe has access to sovereign, large-scale computing capacity at a time when demand for AI infrastructure is accelerating globally.

Consortia or special purpose vehicles bringing together businesses, public bodies and investors will be eligible to bid for the projects. AI Gigafactories may be located within a single Member State or developed across several countries through distributed computing facilities.

The procurement process will be managed by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) in partnership with participating Member States. Eighteen countries have already signed a joint procurement agreement, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Poland.

The programme will be delivered across two funding lots and two development phases.

Under the first lot, up to four projects can receive as much as €100 million in EU funding during the initial phase, followed by up to €400 million each during the second phase. These facilities will initially be required to deploy at least the same number of advanced AI processors as Europe’s current most powerful AI Factory before expanding to at least three times that capacity.

A second funding lot will support up to three larger-scale projects, with each eligible for up to €200 million in phase one and a further €800 million during phase two. These Gigafactories will initially deploy up to twice the processing capacity of Europe’s largest existing AI Factory before scaling to at least four times that level.

Recognising the strategic importance of advanced computing hardware, the Commission confirmed that successful consortia will be able to procure AI chips from suppliers in Europe and like-minded countries. Part of the procurement process will also be reserved for European start-ups and scale-ups to help strengthen the region’s digital supply chain.

In support of the initiative, and following the recent EU-US trade agreement, the European Commission has signed letters of intent with AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm to help ensure successful projects have access to the advanced hardware required to build the facilities.

The call for proposals will remain open until 12 November 2026, with successful projects expected to be selected in early 2027 following an evaluation by EuroHPC JU. Construction is scheduled to begin later in 2027, with the first AI Gigafactories expected to become operational within 18 months of contract signature.