On 16 September 2026 the European Commission welcomed the initiative of nineteen Member States that have designed the first Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) in the field of artificial intelligence. The project, known as IPCEI AI, is now entering the pre-notification phase provided for by the EU State aid rules.
The instrument: Important Projects of Common European Interest
IPCEIs are integrated projects funded through national State aid coordinated among several Member States, which the Commission may approve under Article 107(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The eligibility and compatibility criteria are set out in the 2021 Commission Communication on IPCEIs, published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ C 528 of 2021).
According to the Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition, at least one integrated IPCEI has been approved every year since 2018. Eleven integrated IPCEIs have been approved so far, covering value chains such as microelectronics, batteries, hydrogen, health and cloud. For ten of them, approved State aid and expected private investment in research and development add up to over EUR 92.2 billion, a level the Commission considers comparable to the EU’s Horizon programmes. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for more than 22% of participating companies.
The nineteen Member States and the scope of the project
IPCEI AI has been jointly designed by Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Germany acts as coordinator.
According to the Commission, the project covers the entire AI stack and aims to develop advanced and highly innovative AI and compute management technologies and applications, together with industrial products and services going beyond the state of the art in the sector. The stated objective is a range of decentralised and commonly accessible AI services, supporting European digital sovereignty and the AI value chain from technological development to adoption.
The pre-notification phase and the role of the Commission
Of the nineteen States that designed the initiative, eleven will grant State aid to direct participants and announced that they would start pre-notifying their projects to the Commission in September 2026. The Commission will then assess whether the projects comply with the eligibility and compatibility criteria of the IPCEI Communication.
Preparation took place with the support of the IPCEI Design Support Hub, established in April 2025, in which Commission services help Member States prepare the State aid notification so as to ensure compliance with EU rules from the outset. According to the Commission, this should allow for quicker processing of the notification.
In the digital field, the closest precedent is the IPCEI Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services (IPCEI CIS), approved on 5 December 2023 as the first IPCEI in cloud and edge computing. It involves 19 companies from seven Member States (France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain), with up to EUR 1.2 billion in public funding and EUR 1.4 billion in expected private investment.
The EU policy framework on artificial intelligence
The Commission places IPCEI AI within the path set by three initiatives: the AI Continent Action Plan of April 2025; the Apply AI Strategy of October 2025, focused on AI adoption in strategic sectors; and the proposal for a Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), adopted by the Commission on 3 June 2026 as COM(2026) 502 within the Tech Sovereignty package, together with the Chips Act 2.0 proposal.
The CADA proposal pursues three objectives: support for research, development and innovation in cloud and AI; capacity, aiming at least to triple the EU’s data centre capacity within the next five to seven years and to simplify permitting and access to energy, land, water and financing; and autonomy, through a single EU-wide framework for assessing cloud and AI sovereignty, structured in four assurance levels and intended for public sector bodies.
IPCEI AI complements, through a different instrument, the computing infrastructure built at European level: the AI Gigafactories, described in the contribution Computing capacity for artificial intelligence: the European call for AI Gigafactories, are run through the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), whereas an IPCEI relies on State aid granted by individual Member States and approved by the Commission.
Outlook
Pre-notification precedes the formal notification of the aid; Member States may grant aid to direct participants only after the Commission’s approval decision. At the time of the announcement, the list of direct participants, the amount of aid, the volume of expected private investment and the timing of the decision had not been made public. On the regulatory side, the CADA proposal follows the ordinary legislative procedure, and its final text will shape the context in which IPCEI AI projects are carried out.
In dialogue with the 2030 Agenda
Goal 8. Decent work and economic growth: IPCEIs are designed to mobilise additional private investment and involve a growing share of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Goal 9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure: IPCEI AI supports research, development and first industrial deployment of AI and compute management technologies.
Goal 17. Partnerships for the goals: the project stems from cooperation among nineteen Member States, coordinated by Germany, with the support of Commission services.
Sources
- European Commission, Commission welcomes the design of first Important Project of Common European Interest in AI, 16 September 2026
- European Commission, DG Competition, Approved integrated Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI)
- European Commission, DG Competition, Approved IPCEI Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services
- EUR-Lex, Communication from the Commission on the criteria for the analysis of the compatibility with the internal market of State aid to promote the execution of important projects of common European interest (OJ C 528 of 2021)
- European Commission, Proposal for the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), 3 June 2026
- European Commission, Cloud and AI Development Act
- European Commission, AI Continent Action Plan
- European Commission, Apply AI Strategy
