AI gigafactories – 76 interested parties want to invest in AI in 16 EU countries

A total of 76 expressions of interest were submitted in response to the call for expressions of interest for AI Gigafactories, which ended on June 20. It is proposed to establish AI Gigafactories in 16 Member States at 60 different locations.

The high number of proposals received has far exceeded the Commission’s expectations and demonstrates the strong momentum and interest in AI and in particular AI Gigafactories across Europe. This wave of interest underlines the opportunity for Europe to position itself as a global powerhouse for artificial intelligence, in line with the Action Plan for the AI Continent.

Official call proposals planned for the end of 2025
With the call for expressions of interest, the Commission wanted to gather initial insights from participants comprising leading European companies, private and public investors (from Europe and beyond), and Member States interested in shaping the future AI infrastructure in Europe.

While these contributions are not formal applications, they will be instrumental in helping the European Commission and Member States create a dynamic, non-binding list of potential candidates ready to build world-class AI Gigafactory facilities across the EU ahead of the formal call for proposals planned for the end of 2025.

Respondents include major European companies representing data center operators, telecom companies, energy providers, as well as European and global technology partners, and financial investors. In their expressions of interest, the participants envisage the acquisition of a total of at least three million latest-generation specialized processors (GPUs).

In view of the confidential business information contained in the expressions of interest, the European Commission will not disclose any further information about the identity of the respondents. However, individual participants may decide on their own initiative to disclose their offer.

AI Gigafactories
The AI Gigafactories concept builds on the AI Factories initiative and leverages Europe’s state-of-the-art EuroHPC supercomputing network to realize the EU’s goal of becoming the world’s leading AI continent.

AI Gigafactories will be state-of-the-art, large-scale AI computing and data storage centers specifically designed for the development, training and deployment of next-generation AI models and applications at hyperscale, such as models with hundreds of trillions of parameters.

By integrating massive computing power, energy-efficient data centers and AI-driven automation, these facilities will set new standards for the training, inference and deployment of AI models.

The establishment of the first AI Gigafactories in Europe will require significant investment and coordinated policy action that will bring tangible benefits to EU competitiveness. Therefore, these Gigafactories will serve as flagship pilots for the Competitiveness Coordination Instrument, as outlined in the Competitiveness Compass.

The successful call for expression of interest by the European Commission and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and their follow-up on the selection of consortia for the future implementation of AI Gigafactories in the European Union should be considered as a first test case for the industrial and research policy coordination mechanism between the EU and national levels foreseen as part of the Competitiveness Coordination Instrument.

Next steps
The European Commission will soon start discussions with all participants to prepare the next steps of the AI Gigafactory initiative. The Commission then plans to launch an official call for AI Gigafactories in the EU in the fourth quarter of 2025 through the High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking EuroHPC.