The European Union launched a call for tenders on Thursday to establish up to seven AI gigafactories across Europe, opening the bidding on what it describes as a roughly €30 billion effort to expand the bloc's computing capacity and reduce its reliance on foreign AI infrastructure.
The initiative, led by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, would pair up to €10 billion in public funding from the E.U. and member states with at least €20 billion in expected private investment, the European Commission said. The call closes on November 12, with award decisions expected by early 2027 and construction to begin that same year.
Each gigafactory would combine advanced AI processors, software, cloud technology, high-speed connectivity and data center infrastructure. The Commission said the facilities are designed to give companies, startups, universities and public authorities access to computing power for training, inference and fine-tuning frontier AI models.
The bidding is structured in two lots. The first supports up to four projects, each eligible for up to €100 million in E.U. funding in an initial phase and up to €400 million more in a second phase. The second lot supports up to three projects, each eligible for up to €200 million initially and up to €800 million more in phase two, the Commission said. Eighteen member states have signed a joint procurement agreement and will match E.U. funding.
Each gigafactory must deploy at least as many cutting-edge AI processors as are currently installed in Europe's most powerful AI facility, according to the Commission. In the second phase, capacity in the first lot must reach at least three times that level; in the second lot, at least four times.
"Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates," Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen said in a statement.
The gigafactories would sit alongside Europe's existing network of 19 smaller AI factories attached to supercomputers. When the gigafactories come online, the Commission said, they and the existing AI factory network would push the bloc's total AI computing capacity to more than twice its current level.
Hardware for the facilities may be procured from providers in Europe or what the Commission described as likeminded countries. The Commission said it has signed letters of intent with AMD $AMD, Nvidia $NVDA and Qualcomm $QCOM to ensure bidding consortia have access to necessary chips.
Before the formal tender opened, a preliminary expression-of-interest process attracted 76 responses from consortia spanning the continent, according to The Next Web. The same report noted that of the E.U.'s portion of funding, only roughly €1 billion is currently secured, with the balance contingent on the bloc reaching agreement on its next Multiannual Financial Framework.
Selected gigafactories are expected to begin operations within 18 months of contract signing, the Commission said.