The European Commission on Thursday announced a call for tenders aimed at raising over €30 billion ($34 billion) in state and private funding for the construction of seven so-called AI gigafactories to boost the European Union's computing independence.

Of the funds, €10 billion will come from the EU and member states, while private investors put up the remaining €20 billion. The funds are to be collected and distributed by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), launched in 2020 to develop "a world class supercomputing ecosystem by pooling the resources of the European Union, European countries and private partners."

Consortia and special purpose vehicles (SPVs) made up of technology and cloud service providers, public entities and investors are all eligible to apply for funding. Chipmakers AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm have all signed letters of intent to provide chips to groups involved in the projects, according to the Commission.

The Commission said the scheme will "expand Europe's AI computing capacity and give start-ups, scale-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, industry, academia and public authorities access to infrastructure." Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission's executive vice-president for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, called the moment "a milestone," stating that "access to the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates."

Currently, the EU operates 19 data centers located between Spain and Finland. However, the bloc remains heavily reliant upon foreign actors for its tech, making it extremely vulnerable to outside forces. US President Donald Trump has made clear his intention to leverage American economic heft to influence how the bloc regulates US tech, while China has limited the supply of critical minerals.

A recent report by the European Commission warned that without action, "European businesses and public authorities will continue to rely on US AI providers to the detriment of European service providers," and that "dependence on hyperscale cloud and AI computing service providers... will continue to expose data to third-country access and carry risks to service continuity, endangering operational autonomy."

EU leaders have sounded the alarm over the bloc's lagging AI efforts, yet some citizens are wary of the technology for social, economic and environmental reasons. The Commission has sought to allay fears with pledges that the new technology will be developed according to "EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics."

The European Commission says it will accept bids for its new projects until November 12, and begin distributing funds in early 2027 so that construction can begin within the year.

Source: www.dw.com