EU Opens Bidding for Seven AI Gigafactories in €30 Billion Push to Challenge US and China Dominance

EU aims for seven AI gigafactories with €10 billion plan in race with US, China

BRUSSELS, July 30 (Reuters) - The European Union will fund seven artificial intelligence gigafactories across the bloc with €10 billion ($11.5 billion), the European Commission said on Thursday, as the EU steps up efforts to close the technology gap with the U.S. and China. The Commission said it aims to attract at least €20 billion in private investments for the projects. The total ⁠was increased from five planned gigafactories to seven following strong interest from EU countries. The facilities will combine advanced AI processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity and data centres. They will come on top of the existing 19 AI factories in various EU countries. "Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI Gigafactories is a strategic necessity for ⁠Europe as AI development accelerates," EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said in a statement. Consortia or special purpose vehicles made up of technology providers, cloud service providers, public entities and investors can ⁠apply to take part in the gigafactories. The tender process will close on November 12. The Commission expects to announce successful bidders ⁠in early 2027, with the facilities becoming operational within 18 months of contract signing. AMD (AMD.O), opens new tab, Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Qualcomm (QCOM.O), opens new tab have ⁠signed letters of intent with the Commission to provide chips to groups involved in the gigafactory projects. ($1 = 0.8715 euros) Reporting by Foo Yun Chee. Editing by Mark Potter Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Foo Yun Chee Thomson Reuters An agenda-setting and market-moving journalist, Foo Yun Chee is a 21-year veteran at Reuters. Her stories on high profile mergers have pushed up the European telecoms index, lifted companies' shares and helped investors decide on their next move. Her knowledge and experience of European antitrust laws and developments helped her break stories on Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple, numerous market-moving mergers and antitrust investigations. She has previously reported on Greek politics and companies, when Greece's entry into the eurozone meant it punched above its weight on the international stage, as well as on Dutch corporate giants and the quirks of Dutch society and culture that never fail to charm readers.

EU lays out $11.4 billion for 7 AI gigafactories as it aims to catch up with US and China

BRUSSELS (AP) -- The European Union is offering 10 billion euros ($11.4 billion) in funding for firms to erect seven AI gigafactories as it seeks to close the AI gap with U.S. and China, the 27-nation bloc's executive said on Thursday. The European Commission said it would like the public financing to draw an additional 20 billion euros ($22.8 billion) in private investment. "Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission executive vice president overseeing tech sovereignty. The efforts by Brussels to establish " tech sovereignty " have gained urgency as leaders worry about dependence on technologies from foreign providers, which they say could be "weaponized" against Europeans. U.S. President Donald Trump has railed against the EU over its tech regulations and China has limited the supply of minerals critical to the sector. Firms can now bid for contracts to build gigafactories that are planned to have at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips, making them roughly four times more powerful than the data centers currently running in the EU. The EU's current computing power -- delivered by a network of 19 AI data centers from Finland to Spain -- will more than double when these seven gigafactories come online. Europe lags far behind the U.S. and China in crucial sectors for the development of AI, according to a 2025 assessment by the U.S. Federal Reserve. China has an enormous electrical power capacity for data centers while the U.S. bags the lion's share of private AI investment. Europe doesn't manufacture many of the millions of components needed for data centers and electricity in the EU can cost double or triple what it does in the U.S. and China, according to a Commission report presented to European Parliament in June. "European businesses and public authorities will continue to rely on US AI providers to the detriment of European service providers struggling to work at the frontier," said the report, which listed the bloc's top five cloud service providers as all American. "Dependence on hyperscale cloud and AI computing service providers, particularly for highly critical use cases, will continue to expose data to third-country access and carry risks to service continuity, endangering operational autonomy." France's Mistral now runs the one of the largest AI data center in the EU so far at its campus in Paris. Mistral makes the Le Chat chatbot but it hasn't kept pace with American AI companies like OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, and Chinese rivals like DeepSeek. While political leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have raised the alarm about Europe lacking homegrown AI companies, deep anxieties run rife across the continent about the economic disruption and privacy implications of the nascent technology. The Commission said AI products developed with the growing network of data centers will "follow EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics," perhaps referring to the bloc's Digital Services Act and its Digital Market Act. In June, 40 mayors around the world signed a pact to curtail the negative impact of the construction of AI data centers on the natural resources, energy prices or climate targets of cities from Phoenix to Melbourne.

Europe opens bidding for seven AI 'gigafactories' in a €30bn bid to catch up

The Commission wants up to seven vast compute hubs to rival the US and China, but most of the money is not yet guaranteed, and the chips will still come from America. The European Commission has opened the bidding to build up to seven AI "gigafactories," vast computing hubs meant to give the bloc the raw power to train frontier AI models without depending on the United States. The call for tenders, launched today, is pitched as a roughly €30 billion effort to close the gap with American and Chinese AI. The structure is a public-private split. Brussels and member states would put in about €10 billion between them, with the other €20 billion expected from private investors, on the bet that state money can crowd in the capital these projects need. The scale is deliberately enormous. Each gigafactory would house at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips, making it roughly four times more powerful than the largest data centres running in the EU today, and together they would more than double the bloc's AI compute. The "gigafactory" name is a deliberate step up. Europe already funds a network of 19 smaller "AI factories" attached to its supercomputers, but the new sites are meant to be an order of magnitude larger, built to train the kind of frontier models that today only a handful of US and Chinese labs can afford. The appetite is clearly there. An earlier expression-of-interest round drew 76 responses from consortia across the continent, with ten countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland, lining up to host, and France already signalling it will go it alone. The reasoning is competitive anxiety. Europe has watched the US and China pour money into AI infrastructure while its own firms rent compute from American clouds, and Henna Virkkunen, the Commission's tech-sovereignty chief, called that raw scale of computing power "a strategic necessity." The ambition, though, runs ahead of the cheque. Only about €1 billion of Brussels' share is actually committed; the rest depends on the EU's next long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework, which has not been agreed. A senior official said as much, unusually plainly. "We cannot pre-empt the decisions about the next MFF," the official told reporters, describing the sum as a "best estimate" of what might be available rather than money in hand. The timeline is tight against that uncertainty. Construction is meant to begin in early 2027 and the first gigafactories to come online by mid-2028, a schedule that assumes budgets, sites, and supply chains all fall into place. History suggests caution. The gigafactory plan was first floated in early 2025 and has since slipped repeatedly, with delays that frustrated some of the very partners the Commission now needs to build the things. There is also an awkwardness at the heart of the sovereignty pitch. The chips that would fill these European gigafactories will overwhelmingly come from Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm, all American, which means the bloc would be buying its independence from the companies it wants independence from. Energy is the other constraint. European electricity costs two to three times what it does in the US or China, and data-centre power is already a limiting factor that no amount of subsidy can quickly wish away. Critics have questioned the whole model. Some argue that renting sovereign-branded capacity built on foreign-owned hardware reinforces an illusion of independence rather than delivering it, and that Europe's real gap is in chips and models, not buildings. The counter is that infrastructure is a start, not a finish. Compute alone will not conjure a European OpenAI, but without it the continent's startups have nowhere to train at scale, which is the gap the Commission is trying, expensively, to fill. The Commission's answer is that you have to start somewhere. Public funders would get a proportional share of the compute for research and public projects, and the hope is that building the infrastructure draws the talent, the startups, and eventually the chipmaking toward Europe. For now, the door is open and the money is mostly notional. Firms can bid to build Europe's AI future, on the understanding that the continent has announced €30 billion of ambition and secured, so far, about a thirtieth of it.

E.U. opens bids for 7 AI gigafactories in €30 billion push

Each gigafactory would combine advanced AI processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity and data center infrastructure. The Commission said the facilities are designed to give companies, startups, universities and public authorities access to computing power for training, inference and fine-tuning frontier AI models. The bidding is structured in two lots. The first supports up to four projects, each eligible for up to €100 million in E.U. funding in an initial phase and up to €400 million more in a second phase. The second lot supports up to three projects, each eligible for up to €200 million initially and up to €800 million more in phase two, the Commission said. Eighteen member states have signed a joint procurement agreement and will match E.U. funding.

EU opens call for seven 'gigafactories' to train AI technologies

With concerns about digital dependency growing fast, the European Commission is pursuing "sovereign" AI infrastructure to become operational by mid-2028. The European Commission has launched a call for tenders to publicly finance up to seven AI gigafactories in Europe, as Brussels races to build sovereign infrastructure to train advanced AI models and catch up with global tech competitors. AI gigafactories are large-scale computing facilities equipped with state-of-the-art, highly specialised chips designed to train the next generation of AI technologies - notably the most advanced large language models, which require crunching trillions of data points. The move forms part of a broader tech sovereignty push to cut the EU's dependence on foreign suppliers of cloud services and chips. The global race to build ever more powerful models, with their promise of breakthroughs in both economic and military terms, has triggered a parallel scramble to build the infrastructure underpinning them. Massive data centre projects are already well underway in the US and China. In response, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a plan to build AI gigafactories in Europe at the AI Action Summit in Paris in February 2025, with the ambition of replicating the success of the CERN laboratory in Geneva. Since then, the initiative has drawn considerable interest from industry, with 76 potential consortia expressing preliminary interest in submitting a project proposal. To cater to that appetite from the private sector while ensuring a reasonable geographical spread of infrastructure, the Commission has expanded its initial scope from four or five gigafactories to up to seven. At the same time, the Commission has drawn criticism for repeatedly delaying the initiative, slowing Europe to a pace that undermines its own rhetoric about the urgency of catching up with the US and China. The procurement process has already been split into two consecutive phases, with a staggered approach designed to build up capacity gradually over the next six and a half years. The phasing of the approach is largely down to a shortage of available funding. Having initially appeared committed to a €20 billion fund for the gigafactories, the Commission has gradually scaled back its financial commitments. The public funding share of the project was reduced to roughly a third of the overall investment, with the remaining two-thirds to come from the private sector - and of the EU's third, only half will be provided by Brussels, with the remainder issued by supporting EU countries. As a result, Brussels is set to contribute roughly €5 billion, matched by another €5 billion from European governments, alongside around €20 billion in private investment. Under the current budget, however, Brussels can only commit €1 billion, with the rest expected to come from the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) - itself still a moving target, as it remains the subject of intense negotiations among member states. "We cannot pre-empt the decisions about the next MFF. We gave you our best estimate of how much money we would have from the next MFF to be able to support phase two," a senior Commission official said. In exchange for their public contribution, the EU and the supporting member states will receive a proportionate share of compute access to allocate to public projects, research centres and AI labs of their choosing. All operating costs will fall on the private actors involved, with EU officials insisting the projects must be financially sustainable by developing their own commercial services, given that access to AI compute remains scarce and valuable. Massive infrastructure projects of this kind have attracted criticism in the past, as they tend to favour member states with the deepest pockets. Ten countries have expressed interest in hosting a gigafactory: Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Both single-country and multi-country consortia are possible, and Paris has already signalled it intends to do it alone. Another recurrent criticism is that while the gigafactories aim to build sovereign European infrastructure, the EU remains heavily reliant on foreign suppliers for specialised AI chips. In this regard, the Commission has signed memoranda of understanding with three chipmakers: Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm. Among the criteria to assess the tenders are also measures to avoid potential lock-in effects from suppliers. "We're very aware that we wish to build up Europe's capacity, but we also need to recognise, at the same time, that we want to do some AI right now. So, it's about striking the right balance," a senior EU official said. The successful projects are expected to begin physical construction of the gigafactories at the start of 2027, with facilities due to become operational by mid-2028.

EU launches call to build seven AI Gigafactories

The Commission hopes to unlock at least €30bn in collective public and private funding. The EU is pushing forward with its plans to become the "AI continent" with a fresh call for tenders to set up seven AI Gigafactories across the bloc. The initiative is expected to help the EU develop advanced AI on its own infrastructure in line with its strict rules around model safety. The Commission on Thursday (30 July) said it is setting aside $10bn in EU and national funding, and hopes to tap at least $20bn from the private sector. Interested consortia or Special Purpose Vehicles have until 12 November to make their bid. Awards will be announced in early 2027, the EU authority said. The fresh call comes as the EU ramps up efforts to compete with the US in the AI space. The additional compute capacity is expected to give European enterprises, academia and public authorities access to the infrastructure needed to train and fine-tune advanced AI models. The bloc has an existing network of 19 AI factories. Funding is divided into into two consecutive development phases across two lots, with the 18 participating member states, including Ireland, Germany, France and Sweden matching EU funding, the Commission said. The first lot of the initiative will support four Gigafactories, with each one eligible to receive as much as €100m in EU funding in the first phase, and up to €400m in the second. A second lot will support three projects, with each receiving up to €200m from the bloc to begin with, and up to €800m per project in a second round. Seleted AI Gigafactories are expected to begin operations 18 months after the consortia makes a successful bid. EU's AI Continent action plan, announced in April last year, is a wide-ranging initiative to transform Europe's strong traditional industries and its talent pool into "powerful engines of AI innovation and acceleration". "The opening of the AI Gigafactories call represents a milestone in our AI Continent ambitions. Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI Gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," said EU executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy Henna Virkkunen. "I am pleased to see member states, industry and the Commission coming together to work on these facilities that are key to our technological sovereignty." Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

EU Lays Out $11.4 Billion for 7 AI Gigafactories as It Aims to Catch up With US and China

BRUSSELS (AP) -- The European Union is offering 10 billion euros ($11.4 billion) in funding for firms to erect seven AI gigafactories as it seeks to close the AI gap with U.S. and China, the 27-nation bloc's executive said on Thursday. The European Commission said it would like the public financing to draw an additional 20 billion euros ($22.8 billion) in private investment. "Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission executive vice president overseeing tech sovereignty. The efforts by Brussels to establish " tech sovereignty " have gained urgency as leaders worry about dependence on technologies from foreign providers, which they say could be "weaponized" against Europeans. U.S. President Donald Trump has railed against the EU over its tech regulations and China has limited the supply of minerals critical to the sector. Firms can now bid for contracts to build gigafactories that are planned to have at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips, making them roughly four times more powerful than the data centers currently running in the EU. The EU's current computing power -- delivered by a network of 19 AI data centers from Finland to Spain -- will more than double when these seven gigafactories come online. Europe lags far behind the U.S. and China in crucial sectors for the development of AI, according to a 2025 assessment by the U.S. Federal Reserve. China has an enormous electrical power capacity for data centers while the U.S. bags the lion's share of private AI investment. Europe doesn't manufacture many of the millions of components needed for data centers and electricity in the EU can cost double or triple what it does in the U.S. and China, according to a Commission report presented to European Parliament in June. "European businesses and public authorities will continue to rely on US AI providers to the detriment of European service providers struggling to work at the frontier," said the report, which listed the bloc's top five cloud service providers as all American. "Dependence on hyperscale cloud and AI computing service providers, particularly for highly critical use cases, will continue to expose data to third-country access and carry risks to service continuity, endangering operational autonomy." France's Mistral now runs the one of the largest AI data center in the EU so far at its campus in Paris. Mistral makes the Le Chat chatbot but it hasn't kept pace with American AI companies like OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, and Chinese rivals like DeepSeek. While political leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have raised the alarm about Europe lacking homegrown AI companies, deep anxieties run rife across the continent about the economic disruption and privacy implications of the nascent technology. The Commission said AI products developed with the growing network of data centers will "follow EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics," perhaps referring to the bloc's Digital Services Act and its Digital Market Act. In June, 40 mayors around the world signed a pact to curtail the negative impact of the construction of AI data centers on the natural resources, energy prices or climate targets of cities from Phoenix to Melbourne.

European Union aims for seven AI gigafactories with €10 billion plan in race with US, China

The European Union will fund seven artificial intelligence gigafactories across the bloc. This initiative aims to close the technology gap with the United States and China. The Commission plans to attract at least twenty billion euros in private investments. These facilities will combine advanced AI processors, software, and cloud technology. Successful bidders will be announced in early 2027 for operational facilities. The European Union will fund seven artificial intelligence gigafactories across the bloc with €10 billion ($11.5 billion), the European Commission said on Thursday, as the EU steps up efforts to close the technology gap with the ⁠U.S. ⁠and China. The Commission said it aims to attract at least €20 billion in private investments for the projects. The total was increased from five planned gigafactories to seven following strong interest from EU countries. The facilities will combine advanced AI processors, software, cloud ⁠technology, high-speed connectivity and data centres. They will come on top of the existing 19 ⁠AI factories in various EU countries. "Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI Gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said in a statement. Consortia or special purpose vehicles made up of technology providers, cloud service providers, public entities and investors can apply to take part in the gigafactories. The tender process will close ⁠on November 12. The Commission expects to announce successful bidders in early 2027, with the facilities becoming operational within 18 months of contract signing. AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm have signed letters of intent with the Commission to provide chips to groups involved in the gigafactory projects.

EU lays out $11.4 billion for 7 AI gigafactories as it aims to catch up with U.S. and China

BRUSSELS (AP) -- The European Union is offering 10 billion euros (US$11.4 billion) in funding for firms to erect seven AI gigafactories as it seeks to close the AI gap with U.S. and China, the 27-nation bloc's executive said on Thursday. The European Commission said it would like the public financing to draw an additional 20 billion euros (US$22.8 billion) in private investment. "Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission executive vice president overseeing tech sovereignty. The efforts by Brussels to establish " tech sovereignty " have gained urgency as leaders worry about dependence on technologies from foreign providers, which they say could be "weaponized" against Europeans. U.S. President Donald Trump has railed against the EU over its tech regulations and China has limited the supply of minerals critical to the sector. Firms can now bid for contracts to build gigafactories that are planned to have at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips, making them roughly four times more powerful than the data centers currently running in the EU. The EU's current computing power -- delivered by a network of 19 AI data centers from Finland to Spain -- will more than double when these seven gigafactories come online. Europe lags far behind the U.S. and China in crucial sectors for the development of AI, according to a 2025 assessment by the U.S. Federal Reserve. China has an enormous electrical power capacity for data centers while the U.S. bags the lion's share of private AI investment. Europe doesn't manufacture many of the millions of components needed for data centers and electricity in the EU can cost double or triple what it does in the U.S. and China, according to a Commission report presented to European Parliament in June. "European businesses and public authorities will continue to rely on US AI providers to the detriment of European service providers struggling to work at the frontier," said the report, which listed the bloc's top five cloud service providers as all American. "Dependence on hyperscale cloud and AI computing service providers, particularly for highly critical use cases, will continue to expose data to third-country access and carry risks to service continuity, endangering operational autonomy." France's Mistral now runs the one of the largest AI data center in the EU so far at its campus in Paris. Mistral makes the Le Chat chatbot but it hasn't kept pace with American AI companies like OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, and Chinese rivals like DeepSeek. While political leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have raised the alarm about Europe lacking homegrown AI companies, deep anxieties run rife across the continent about the economic disruption and privacy implications of the nascent technology. The Commission said AI products developed with the growing network of data centers will "follow EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics," perhaps referring to the bloc's Digital Services Act and its Digital Market Act. In June, 40 mayors around the world signed a pact to curtail the negative impact of the construction of AI data centers on the natural resources, energy prices or climate targets of cities from Phoenix to Melbourne. Sam Mcneil, The Associated Press

EU aims for seven AI gigafactories with EUR10 billion plan in race with US, China

BRUSSELS, July 30 (Reuters) - The European Union will fund seven artificial intelligence gigafactories across the bloc with EUR10 billion ($11.5 billion), the European Commission said on Thursday, as the EU steps up efforts to close the technology gap with the U.S. and China. The Commission said it aims to attract at least EUR20 billion in private investments for the projects. The total was increased from five planned gigafactories to seven following strong interest from EU countries. The facilities will combine advanced AI processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity and data centres. They will come on top of the existing 19 AI factories in various EU countries. "Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI Gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said in a statement. Consortia or special purpose vehicles made up of technology providers, cloud service providers, public entities and investors can apply to take part in the gigafactories. The tender process will close on November 12. The Commission expects to announce successful bidders in early 2027, with the facilities becoming operational within 18 months of contract signing. AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm have signed letters of intent with the Commission to provide chips to groups involved in the gigafactory projects. ($1 = 0.8715 euros) (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee. Editing by Mark Potter)

EU launches multibillion-euro project for seven AI gigafactories

BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The European Commission today formally opened the bidding process to build up to seven so-called AI gigafactories for artificial intelligence applications. The initiative is part of the strategy to expand Europe's AI infrastructure and improve access to high-performance computing for businesses, academia and public authorities. The ambitious project pools up to €10bn in public funding from the EU and participating member states. These public seed funds are intended to trigger at least €20bn in private investment, taking the program's total volume to more than €30bn. With the AI gigafactories, the European Union wants to catch up with the US and China in the global race for artificial intelligence. The initiative is designed to promote a European infrastructure that safeguards digital sovereignty and data control, and reduces dependence on US technology groups such as Amazon (AWS), Google or Microsoft. The planned data centers are meant to combine modern AI processors, cloud technologies, high-speed networks and energy-efficient infrastructure. Germany wants to secure an appropriate share of the large funding pot. Early plans to field major German tech companies together in a kind of "Germany Inc." effort failed, in part because SAP and Siemens were highly restrained in signaling interest. Now several players from Germany are entering separately, putting them in competition with one another. They include Deutsche Telekom, Schwarz Digits, the IT and digital arm of the Schwarz Group (parent company of Lidl and Kaufland), cloud provider Ionos, which is part of United Internet and is teaming up with construction group Hochtief, as well as various smaller and regional players such as Impossible Cloud or Blue Swan./chd/DP/zb