Abu dhabi: The European Commission today launched a call for proposals to establish up to seven artificial intelligence gigafactories across European Union member states. According to Emirates News Agency, the initiative aims to mobilize more than £30 billion in combined public and private investment to equip the bloc with the infrastructure and computing capacity needed to develop advanced AI models.
The Commission expects to allocate up to £10 billion in European and national funding to attract at least £20 billion in additional private investment. The new advanced facilities are intended to serve as a core resource for small and medium-sized enterprises, start-ups, research centers, universities, and public administrations, enabling them to develop, train, and operate the latest artificial intelligence systems.
The Commission has invited consortia comprising companies, public institutions, and investors to participate. Projects may be located in a single member state or across several EU countries, with all applications subject to a competitive evaluation process based on the European Commission's selection criteria. Financial resources will be managed through the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), which includes 18 participating countries, among them Spain, and will jointly procure computing capacity from the selected AI gigafactories.
The initiative provides two funding tracks. The first offers EU financing of up to £500 million for each facility, while the second makes available up to £1 billion per project, to be disbursed across the two planned development phases. In a related development, Brussels announced the signing of letters of intent with major US technology companies AMD, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm to facilitate access for selected consortia to the advanced computing components and hardware required for the projects. The move follows the recently concluded trade agreement between the European Union and the United States.
The application window will remain open until 12th November, with the Commission expected to make final award decisions in early 2027, paving the way for construction of the first AI gigafactories to begin later that year.
