EU to co-fund seven AI Gigafactories in race for tech autonomy

The EU has launched a call for tenders to fund up to seven AI Gigafactories to train AI technologies as part of a greater bid for European tech sovereignty. The term Gigafactory was spun out of Tesla’s own massive electric vehicle battery plant, which the EU will adapt to produce advanced AI processors, software and cloud technology stacks, high-speed connectivity, and energy-efficient data centres. On top of its existing network of 19 AI Factories, the EU initiative aims to develop advanced own AI infrastructure, which commissioner Henna Virkkunen said on Thursday (30 July) was “key to our technological sovereignty.” Brussels pledged €10bn in funding, of which €4bn was expected to come from an inconclusive next multi-annual budget, and which was to be matched by at least €20bn in EU-based private tenders to get the centres up and running. “It’s going to be one of the biggest, if it’s not the largest, public-private partnership that will be put in place in the European Union,” a commission official told press on Thursday. The EU-based facilities “will follow all the laws that we have, starting from the AI Act and moving to protection of freedoms, protection of user rights,” the official continued. The project will also seek to reduce EU dependance on foreign companies for chips and cloud services. The initiative was launched in February 2025 at the AI Action Summit in Paris, with construction expected to start in 2027. The private-led facilities are the central pillar of the AI Continent Action Plan, which is meant to see the EU to become a global leader in AI and simplify work in sectors like healthcare, security, defence, transport, energy, and robotics. Although the EU had been under pressure to deliver on its AI plans, experts fear this may be a rushed effort that could leave space for private companies to take liberties in the building process. “The tender is quite packed, and while it contains references to energy efficiency, networking, and supply-chain resilience, some of those requirements are intentionally left open and vague,” said Maria Nowicka, Policy Researcher at Interface, a tech thinktank. “That leaves a real risk that individual AI gigafactories end up pursuing their own purposes, rather than fitting into a single coherent EU-level strategy,” she told EUobserver.