EU plans €10B for seven AI gigafactories to compete globally

The European Union is planning to build AI gigafactories, massive computing facilities each designed to house more than 100,000 AI-optimized processors dedicated to training frontier AI models. The price tag sits at roughly €10 billion for the initial sites, part of a broader €20 billion allocation from the InvestAI Facility that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in February 2025. What exactly is an AI gigafactory Each gigafactory would pack over 100,000 advanced AI processors into a single location. The initiative builds on the EU’s existing AI Factories program, which already provides shared computing access for researchers, small and medium enterprises, and startups. The gigafactories represent a dramatic escalation of that approach, moving from shared access to dedicated, continent-scale infrastructure. Location selection will prioritize three things: power capacity, network connectivity, and supply-chain logistics. The competitive landscape and why Europe feels behind Right now, European AI companies and research institutions overwhelmingly rely on non-European hyperscalers, primarily American cloud providers, for their computing needs. The gigafacto...