The European Commission opened bidding on July 30 for seven AI gigafactories backed by €10B ($11.4B) in public funding, aiming to close the computing gap with the US and China. The bloc expects private investment to add another €20B, bringing the total to roughly €30B.
Each gigafactory must house at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips, roughly four times the power of existing EU data centers. The network will more than double the continent’s current computing capacity, which runs across 19 AI data centers from Finland to Spain.
EU tech sovereignty chief Henna Virkkunen called access to raw computing scale a “strategic necessity” as AI development accelerates. The push reflects deep anxiety in Brussels about dependence on US hyperscalers. An internal Commission report warned that European businesses and governments will keep relying on American AI providers unless homegrown infrastructure catches up.
Europe lags far behind on multiple fronts. Electricity costs can run double or triple US and China rates. The EU does not manufacture most data center components. Private AI investment flows overwhelmingly to American companies.
An earlier informal call for proposals drew 77 submissions across 16 member states and 60 potential locations. French startup Mistral already runs one of the continent’s biggest AI computing hubs in Paris, but its Le Chat chatbot trails behind ChatGPT and DeepSeek in market reach. The gap between European ambitions and American scale underscores why the Commission is fronting public money rather than waiting for private capital to catch up.
The Commission said products developed through the gigafactory network must follow EU data protection, safety, and ethics standards, pointing to the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act as the regulatory framework.
