The EU launched a call for tenders to establish up to seven AI Gigafactories across Europe, as part of its latest major push to accelerate Europe’s technol…
The EU launched a call for tenders to establish up to seven AI Gigafactories across Europe, as part of its latest major push to accelerate Europe’s technological sovereignty and ambition of becoming the AI Continent.
Led by industry and supported by up to €10 billion in EU and national funding, the initiative is expected to unlock at least €20 billion in private investment across the Union. It will expand Europe’s AI computing capacity and give start-ups, scale-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, industry, academia and public authorities access to infrastructure for training, inference and fine-tuning advanced frontier AI models.
The AI Gigafactories will combine advanced AI processors, software and cloud technology stacks, high-speed connectivity and energy-efficient data centres. Together with Europe’s network of 19 AI Factories, they will strengthen Europe’s technological leadership, resilience and strategic autonomy.
The initiative will ensure that Europe can develop advanced AI on its own infrastructure, in line with EU rules and values. AI technologies developed in the AI Gigafactories will follow EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics.
Who can apply
Consortia or Special Purpose Vehicles bringing together companies, public entities, investors and other partners can apply.
The AI Gigafactories may be established in a single Member State, either on one site or across several locations. They may also include cross-border developments in several Member States through distributed AI computing facilities.
Proposals will undergo a competitive evaluation to select the successful projects.
Funding and scale
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and Member States will jointly procure compute access time from the selected AI Gigafactories. Eighteen Member States have signed a joint procurement agreement with the EuroHPC JU: Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. The procurement process will support up to seven AI Gigafactories across two consecutive development phases and two lots, with participating Member States matching EU funding. Public funding acts as a powerful catalyst for the initiative, driving the deep private investment required to construct and operate these facilities.
The first lot will support up to four projects, each eligible for up to €100 million in EU funding in phase one and up to an additional €400 million per project in phase two. Each Gigafactory selected in this lot must deploy at least as many of the most advanced AI processors as are currently installed in Europe’s most powerful AI factory. In phase two, capacity must increase to at least three times that level. The second lot will support up to three projects, each eligible for up to €200 million of EU funding in phase one and up to an additional €800 million per project in phase two. Each Gigafactory selected in this lot must deploy up to twice as many of the most advanced AI processors as are currently installed in Europe’s most powerful AI factory. In phase two, capacity must increase to at least four times that level.
Hardware for the AI Continent
Advanced AI depends on highly specialised computing hardware. As global AI adoption accelerates, access to large-scale sovereign AI infrastructure is becoming increasingly important for Europe’s industrial competitiveness and technological sovereignty
AI Gigafactories consortia may procure hardware during any of the two development phases of the AI Gigafactory from any hardware providers in Europe or likeminded countries. Part of this procurement may be dedicated to European start-ups and scale ups, with the AI Gigafactories providing concrete opportunities to strengthen the European digital supply chain. At the same time, and as a follow up of the EU-US trade deal, the Commission has signed three letters of intent with major US hardware providers, AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm to ensure consortia have seamless access to necessary hardware.
Next steps
The call closes on 12 November 2026.
Following an evaluation process managed by the EuroHPC JU, award decisions are expected by early 2027. The necessary framework and specific contracts will then be signed to allow construction to begin in 2027.
Selected AI Gigafactories are expected to begin operations within a maximum of 18 months from the signature.
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