EU opens bidding for seven AI gigafactories

The European Commission opened its formal call for proposals for seven AI gigafactories, offering €10 billion ($11.4 billion) in public funding intended to draw a further €20 billion from private investors for a combined €30 billion in infrastructure spending. The facilities are meant to give start-ups, researchers and industrial companies computing capacity for training and fine-tuning large AI models, narrowing a gap with the United States and China that Brussels has flagged for several years.

Consortia made up of companies, public bodies, investors and other partners can apply, with bidding closing on 12 November 2026. The Commission expects to announce award decisions in early 2027, with construction of the winning sites due to begin the same year.

Funding infrastructure rather than specific models is a bet that compute access, not any single company's technology, is the constraint holding back European AI development.