EU offers $11.4 billion for AI gigafactories

The European Union is offering 10 billion euros ($11.4 billion) for firms to build seven AI gigafactories, part of an effort to narrow the gap with the U.S. and China. The European Commission wants the public funding to attract an additional 20 billion euros ($22.8 billion) in private investment, framing access to large-scale computing power as a strategic need.

Companies can bid to build sites designed to use at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips, making them roughly four times more powerful than data centers currently operating in the EU. The Commission said the projects would more than double computing power now provided by a network of 19 AI data centers across the bloc.

European officials are pursuing tech sovereignty amid concerns that reliance on foreign providers could be weaponized. A Commission report said Europe lacks many components needed for data centers, faces electricity costs that can be double or triple those in the U.S. and China, and remains dependent on American cloud providers.

The push comes as Mistral runs one of the largest AI data centers in the EU but trails rivals such as OpenAI and DeepSeek. The Commission said products developed through the expanded network will follow EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics, while 40 mayors have backed a pact aimed at limiting data center impacts on resources, energy prices and climate targets.