The European Union has launched a major call for tenders to build up to seven massive "AI Gigafactories" across the continent, taking its boldest step yet to secure European technological sovereignty and challenge U.S. and China's dominance in artificial intelligence.
Supported by up to $11.5 billion (€10 billion) in public funding from the EU and member state budgets, officials expect the project to mobilize at least $23 billion (€20 billion) in private investment.
"The opening of the AI Gigafactories call represents a milestone in our AI Continent ambitions," said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. She added that access to the raw scale of computing power within AI Gigafactories is "a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates."
Breaking the Computing Bottleneck
European start-ups, researchers, and industrial firms have long struggled with a shortage of local high-performance computing power, often leaving them reliant on infrastructure controlled by U.S. tech giants. The new Gigafactories aim to bridge this gap, offering small businesses, academia, and public authorities affordable access to world-class processing capacity.The facilities will combine high-end artificial intelligence processors, software stacks, high-speed data interconnects, and energy-efficient data centres. They will build on Europe’s existing network of 19 smaller "AI Factories," dramatically scaling up the continent’s computational muscle.
Transatlantic Silicon Deals
While the initiative encourages sourcing hardware from European start-ups to reinforce local supply chains, Brussels has acknowledged the reality of current market dependencies.As part of a broader EU-US trade arrangement, the Commission has signed letters of intent with American semiconductor heavyweights AMD, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm to guarantee seamless hardware access for winning consortia.
Applications are open to consortia and Special Purpose Vehicles that bring together private companies, public entities, and financial investors. Projects can be based on a single site within a single EU member state, or distributed across multiple cross-border locations to build shared computing networks.
Procurement will be managed jointly by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking and 18 participating member states, including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland.
Construction is scheduled to begin later that year, with selected Gigafactories expected to become operational within 18 months of signing their contracts.