The EU has 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 EU said 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, and will “strengthen Europe’s technological leadership, resilience and strategic autonomy”.

Henna Virkkunen, (pic) executive vice-president for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy added: “ The opening of the AI Gigafactories call represents a milestone in our AI Continent ambitions. Access to the raw scale of computing power within AI Gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates. I am pleased to see Member States, industry and the Commission coming together to work on these facilities that are key to our technological sovereignty.”

She added 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.

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.

The EU added: “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.”