Computing capacity for artificial intelligence: the European call for AI Gigafactories

On 30 July 2026 the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) published the call for tenders to select the consortia that will build and operate the AI Gigafactories, the large-scale facilities intended for training and running artificial intelligence models. The deadline for submitting proposals is 12 November 2026.

What the call provides for

The procurement will support the establishment of up to seven AI Gigafactories, each equipped with a very large number of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence processors. According to the Joint Undertaking, the facilities are expected to be located in at least seven Member States, with the possibility that some operate as cross-border collaborations distributed across more than one country. Applications are open to consortia or Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV) bringing together companies, public entities, investors and other partners; a gigafactory may be established in a single Member State, on one site or across several locations, or spread across several Member States through distributed computing facilities.

The facilities will combine massive computing power, state-of-the-art processors, software and cloud technology stacks, high bandwidth connectivity and energy-efficient data centres. After the deadline, proposals will undergo a competitive evaluation; selection is expected in early 2027 and the gigafactories should begin operations within eighteen months of being selected.

The funding model

According to the European Commission, the initiative is led by industry and supported by up to EUR 10 billion in EU and national funding, with the aim of unlocking at least EUR 20 billion in private investment: more than EUR 30 billion in total. The Joint Undertaking and several of its Participating States will jointly procure compute access time from the selected gigafactories. Public funding therefore acts as an anchor customer and de-risks the capital required to build the facilities.

Selected projects will receive different levels of EU and national co-funding, reflecting their size and the range of sovereign services they intend to deploy. Part of the public financing falls under the current Multiannual Financial Framework, while the bulk will come from the next one (2028-2035). On 4 December 2025 the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group and the Commission had announced a Memorandum of Understanding to support the development of the gigafactories, including advisory support through the InvestEU Advisory Hub and the possibility of supplementing grants with loans.

The institutional and legal path

The initiative originates in InvestAI, launched on 11 February 2025 by the President of the European Commission at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris: EUR 200 billion of overall investment, including a European fund of EUR 20 billion dedicated to gigafactories. The policy framework is the AI Continent Action Plan, presented on 9 April 2025, which identifies the scale-up of computing capacity as a strategic prerequisite. An informal call for expression of interest gathered 77 proposals, referring to 60 different sites in 16 Member States.

In legal terms, the Commission put forward a proposal to amend the regulation governing the Joint Undertaking on 15 July 2025. The Council adopted it on 16 January 2026: Council Regulation (EU) 2026/150 was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 19 January 2026 and entered into force the following day. The amendment extends the objectives of the Joint Undertaking to the creation of AI Gigafactories, adds a dedicated quantum technologies pillar, sets rules on funding and procurement and safeguards the interests of start-ups and scale-ups. The regulation had already been amended in 2024 to include the AI Factories.

Who will have access to the computing capacity

The gigafactories are intended for start-ups, scale-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, industry, academia and public authorities, for the training, fine tuning and inference of advanced models. Access is foreseen for public and private users resident in the States participating in the Joint Undertaking, under a service-oriented model expected to make computing easier and more affordable to use.

The new capacity adds to what already exists. The Joint Undertaking has deployed twelve supercomputers, including JUPITER in Germany and Alice Recoque in France, Europe’s first exascale systems, and is overseeing the implementation of nineteen AI Factories, complemented by thirteen AI Factory Antennas offering free, customised support to small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups. On the scale of the facilities, the Memorandum of Understanding with the EIB referred to about 100,000 of the most advanced chips for each gigafactory, roughly four times the current generation of AI Factories, and envisaged up to five facilities: the call published in July 2026 provides for up to seven. The Commission states that technologies developed in these facilities will follow EU rules on data protection, safety, security and ethics.

Energy use and data centre rules

The call requires energy-efficient data centres, at a time when the Union is building dedicated measurement tools. The Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy notes that the information and communication technology sector is among the fastest-growing ones and that its expansion affects not only energy consumption but also electricity grids, carbon emissions and environmental resources such as water.

The legal framework is built in two steps. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364, which supplements Directive (EU) 2023/1791 on energy efficiency, established the European database on data centres and the scheme for reporting information and key performance indicators: this is the first step towards a common rating scheme. The second step is a draft regulation opened for feedback on 27 March 2026, with the deadline for contributions set at 23 April 2026 and adoption planned for the second quarter of 2026 as part of a data centre energy efficiency package. The scheme will provide ratings through electronic labels issued automatically by the European database, with the aim of making energy use more transparent, allowing comparison between facilities in the same region, reducing energy and water consumption and promoting renewable energy and the re-use of waste heat in nearby buildings and heat networks.

Outlook

The timetable set out by the European institutions foresees the closing of the call on 12 November 2026, the selection of projects in early 2027, the start of construction of the first gigafactory in the same year and entry into operation within eighteen months of selection. Still to be determined are the actual number of facilities funded and their location, the levels of co-funding granted to each project and the share of public resources that will depend on the 2028-2035 Multiannual Financial Framework. On the environmental side, the adoption of the regulation on the rating scheme will set the parameters for measuring the efficiency of the data centres hosting the new computing capacity.

In dialogue with the 2030 Agenda

Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). The initiative concerns directly the Union’s digital infrastructure endowment and its research and innovation capacity.
Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). The data centres hosting the gigafactories affect electricity consumption, efficiency and the use of renewable sources.
Goal 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth). Access to computing capacity is also aimed at start-ups, scale-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises.
Goal 13 (Climate Action). Reducing energy and water consumption and re-using waste heat are among the objectives of the European rating scheme for data centres.
Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). The chosen model is a partnership between the Union, Member States, industry, private investors and the European Investment Bank.