The European Commission (EC) has launched a tender process to build up to seven AI gigafactories across Europe, committing $11.5 billion in public funding to strengthen the continent's sovereign AI infrastructure and narrow the gap with U.S. and Chinese competitors.

Unveiled by the EC this week, the initiative aims to expand Europe's access to the computing power required to train, fine-tune, and deploy advanced AI models, while reducing the region's dependence on infrastructure located outside its borders. The move comes as the vast majority of frontier AI models continue to be developed and trained on compute infrastructure concentrated in the United States and China, leaving European researchers and companies reliant on external capacity for the most resource-intensive workloads.

According to the commission, the program could attract at least $23 billion in private investment alongside the public funding.

The commission originally intended to support five gigafactories — industrial-scale facilities for AI compute, EV batteries, and electric vehicles — but raised the number to seven after receiving strong interest from EU member states.

Henna Virkkunen, the EC's executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, described the tender as a milestone in Europe's AI ambitions.

"Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," she said in a statement.

The EC said the new facilities will complement Europe's existing network of 19 AI factories, integrating advanced AI processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity, and energy-efficient data center infrastructure. The existing AI factories, connected to EuroHPC supercomputing sites such as LUMI in Finland and Leonardo in Italy, currently serve research and smaller-scale AI workloads.

The gigafactories are expected to provide computing capacity to AI startups, scale-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, industrial firms, researchers, and public sector organizations.

The project is also designed to advance the EU's broader goal of becoming an "AI continent" while ensuring that AI systems are developed in compliance with EU data protection, security, and ethics regulations. This regulatory dimension takes on added significance following the entry into force of the EU AI Act, the world's first comprehensive AI regulatory framework, which imposes tiered obligations on AI developers based on perceived risk levels.

The initiative also complements the EU Chips Act, a €43 billion program adopted in 2023 aimed at doubling Europe's share of global semiconductor production to 20% by 2030, as part of a coordinated push across the compute stack — from chip supply to model deployment.

The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and participating member states will jointly procure compute access from the selected facilities. Eighteen member states have signed a joint procurement agreement with EuroHPC JU, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and Ireland.

Chipmakers Sign On

While the commission has framed the gigafactories as a key component of Europe's pursuit of technological sovereignty, the facilities will not be restricted to European hardware. The commission said that although part of the procurement could be directed toward European startups and scale-ups, the consortium building the gigafactories will be free to source processors and other hardware from suppliers both within and outside Europe.

Chipmakers AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm have signed letters of intent with the commission to help ensure that companies involved in the projects have access to the hardware needed to build out the facilities. Nvidia in particular currently dominates the market for AI accelerators, and the company's participation signals that the facilities will have access to the same class of high-performance GPUs used in leading U.S. AI data centers.

The EC's tender will close on November 12, with successful bidders expected to be announced in early 2027. Selected facilities are slated to become operational within 18 months of contract signing, meaning the earliest gigafactories could come online by late 2028.