EU Aims for Seven AI Gigafactories with €10 Billion Plan in Race with US, China
The European Commission has raised its target from five to seven facilities after strong demand from member states, and AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm have signed letters of intent to supply the chips.
BRUSSELS: The European Union will fund seven artificial intelligence gigafactories across the bloc with €10 billion in public money, the European Commission said on Thursday, as it tries to close a widening technology gap with the United States and China. The Commission expects to attract at least €20 billion in private investment on top of its own commitment, pushing the total envelope toward €30 billion.
The plan had originally targeted five gigafactories, but EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said the number was increased after strong interest from member states. "Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI Gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," she said. The facilities will bundle advanced AI processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity, and data centres into single integrated sites, sitting alongside the 19 smaller AI factories already operating in various EU countries.
AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm have all signed letters of intent with the Commission to supply chips to the consortia that will build and run the sites. The tender process closes on November 12, with successful bidders expected to be named in early 2027. The Commission said the gigafactories should become operational within 18 months of contract signing, setting a timeline that stretches into late 2028 or early 2029 for the first facilities to come online.
The push arrives as Europe confronts the uncomfortable reality that it has fallen far behind in AI infrastructure. U.S. hyperscalers are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into data centres, and Chinese firms like Moonshot and Z.ai are releasing open-weight models that rival America's best closed systems. Europe, by contrast, has struggled to produce a single large-scale AI campus or a competitive frontier model, a gap that the gigafactory program is explicitly designed to address.
BuiltWorld AI Operational Take: An 18-month window from contract signing to operational status is ambitious for facilities of this scale, and the real test will be whether the consortia can assemble land, power, and permits within that timeframe. The presence of AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm as committed chip suppliers removes one major bottleneck, but the power and cooling infrastructure for seven gigafactories will need to be secured in parallel with the tender evaluation. Any member state that wins a facility will have to fast-track grid upgrades and environmental approvals or risk watching the timeline slip past 2029.