The European Commission has opened the bidding process for up to seven AI gigafactories. Up to 10 billion euros in public money is available for these large data centres, from the EU and the participating member states. That funding is meant to draw at least 20 billion euros in private capital. The total programme would then exceed 30 billion euros.

The subject is computing capacity, and Europe has too little of it. "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. Behind that term sits a worry about depending on technology from foreign suppliers.

The money will be awarded through the European supercomputing initiative EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. The procedure has two funding classes. The first supports up to four projects with up to 100 million euros each at first, and up to 400 million in a second phase. Those sites must then provide at least three times the processor capacity of the most powerful European AI factory currently running. The second class is aimed at up to three larger projects, with up to 200 million euros in phase one and up to 800 million in phase two, at four times the computing capacity.

What is meant to fill the halls

Each gigafactory is planned to hold at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips. That makes it roughly four times more powerful than the data centres operating in the EU today. Europe's current computing power is spread across a network of 19 AI data centres from Finland to Spain. Once the seven new sites come online, the Commission says that capacity will more than double.

The gap the programme is meant to close is substantial. According to a 2025 assessment by the US Federal Reserve, Europe lags well behind the United States and China in fields central to AI development. China holds enormous electrical power capacity for data centres, while the United States attracts the lion's share of private AI investment.

Whether the tender turns into buildings depends on the bids. So far the Commission has set the money and the requirements, not the locations.