EU Opens Tender for Seven AI 'Gigafactories' Backed by €10 Billion in Public Funding
How left and right are reading this
- Both agree
- Europe's dependence on foreign cloud and chip providers is a real strategic vulnerability, and public money at this scale is a legitimate lever for closing it.
- They split on
- Whether the story is about guaranteeing universities, SMEs and public bodies access to compute, or about whether €10bn in public funds actually pulls €20bn of private capital.
The Facts
- The European Commission launched a call for tenders on Thursday to fund up to seven AI gigafactories across the EU, offering up to €10 billion (roughly $11.4–11.5 billion) in EU and national public funding.
- The Commission says it aims for the public money to mobilise at least €20 billion in private investment, bringing total potential investment above €30 billion.
- The number of planned gigafactories was increased from five to seven after what the Commission described as strong interest from EU member states.
- The programme is structured as three large-scale facilities and four medium-scale ones, each combining specialised AI chips, high-speed connectivity and data centre capacity; individual sites are described in terms of tens of thousands to over 100,000 AI accelerators.
- Henna Virkkunen, the Commission executive vice president overseeing tech sovereignty, said access to "the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates."
- EU officials frame the initiative as reducing dependence on foreign providers of cloud services and advanced chips, citing concern that such dependence could be used against Europe.
- The facilities are intended to give start-ups, SMEs, industrial firms, research centres, universities and public administrations access to computing capacity for training advanced AI models, adding to 19 existing smaller AI factories in EU countries.
- Procurement is run through the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), and member states including Poland and Greece are preparing bids — Poland has signed a joint procurement agreement and committed 400 million zlotys (about €92.6 million / $106 million) toward a medium-scale site.
- Key outcomes remain undecided: successful bidders are expected to be announced in early 2027, with facilities targeted to become operational around mid-2028, and the €20 billion in private co-investment has not yet been secured.
- In a separate but concurrent step, the Commission unveiled a new enforcement team on Friday to police AI companies as its AI Act obligations — including labelling or watermarking AI-generated chatbots and imagery — take effect.
Context
What exactly is an "AI gigafactory"?
Despite the name, they are not factories that manufacture goods. They are large-scale computing centres equipped with state-of-the-art specialised chips designed to train the next generation of AI models, particularly large language models that process trillions of data points Novinite.com,Euronews English. Each combines advanced AI processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity and data centres Reuters,International Busin…. The Commission says the planned sites would be several times more powerful than data centres currently operating in the EU India Today.
Who pays, and who decides which projects win?
Up to €10 billion would come from EU and national government budgets, with private investors expected to supply at least €20 billion more Deutsche Welle,Anadolu Ajansı,International Busin…. Funds are collected and distributed through the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) Deutsche Welle,Anadolu Ajansı. Industry consortia must bid, and member states must sign joint procurement agreements to take part — Poland did so in July POLITICO,Polska Agencja Pras….
Which countries are competing to host the sites?
Germany, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain are backing plans for the largest hubs, according to POLITICO POLITICO. Poland is seeking a medium-scale facility supporting at least 75,000 AI accelerators and has allocated more than 400 million zlotys Anadolu Ajansı,Polska Agencja Pras…. In Greece, utility PPC has signalled it may bid for a site in the former lignite-mining region of Kozani in Western Macedonia, with government backing Η Ναυτεμπορ….
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