EU AI Gigafactories call open until 12 November, targeting over €30 billion in investment

On 30 July 2026, the European Commission launched a call for tenders to support the creation of at least 7 AI Gigafactories in Europe. With support of up to €10 billion in EU and national funding, the initiative is projected to unlock another €20 billion in private investment. The call closes on 12 November 2026. 

The AI Gigafactories may be established in a single Member State, either on one site or across several locations. They may also include cross-border developments in several Member States through distributed AI computing facilities. 

AIl-you-need-to-know: AI Gigafactories 

The European Union currently relies on non-EU countries for over 80% of key digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property. As global AI adoption accelerates, access to large-scale sovereign AI infrastructure is becoming increasingly important for Europe's industrial competitiveness and technological sovereignty.

AI Gigafactories are the next step towards larger efforts to scale up artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions in Europe - and build the infrastructure needed to develop frontier AI on the European continent itself. These ambitions must also be backed by plenty of computing power: AI Gigafactories are, effectively, a new generation of large-scale AI infrastructure designed to train, fine-tune and deploy advanced AI models in Europe. AI Gigafactories will combine state-of-the-art processors with high-speed networks, cloud technologies, and energy-efficient data centres to boost the computing capacity of the continent. 

The AI Gigafactories will combine advanced AI processors, software and cloud technology stacks, high-speed connectivity and energy-efficient data centres. Together with Europe's network of 19 AI Factories, they will strengthen Europe's technological leadership, resilience and strategic autonomy.

Call for Tenders: AI Gigafactories

The open call for tenders aims to expand European AI computing capacity and provide access to infrastructure for training, inference and fine-tuning advanced frontier AI models to start-ups, scale-ups, SMEs, industry, academia and public authorities in Europe. 

The initiative will ensure that Europe can develop advanced AI on its own infrastructure, in line with EU rules and values. AI technologies developed in the AI Gigafactories will follow EU standards on data protection, safety, security and ethics.

Eligibility: who can apply? 

Consortia or Special Purpose Vehicles bringing together companies, public entities, investors and other partners are all welcome to apply.

About this call: how does it work? 

The EU is using joint public procurement to kick-start investment in AI Gigafactories at scale. Through the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), the EU and participating Member States will jointly procure compute access time from selected facilities, providing a strong public anchor for the much larger private investment needed to build and operate them. Eighteen Member States have already signed the joint procurement agreement: Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

The call will support up to seven AI Gigafactories, developed in two phases and divided into two lots:

• Lot 1: up to four projects. Each project can receive up to €100 million in EU funding in phase one, followed by up to €400 million more in phase two. Selected facilities must initially deploy at least as many of the most advanced AI processors as Europe’s most powerful AI Factory today, before scaling to at least three times that capacity in phase two.
• Lot 2: up to three larger projects. Each can receive up to €200 million in phase one and a further €800 million in phase two. These facilities are expected to reach up to twice the advanced processor capacity of Europe’s current leading AI Factory initially, rising to at least four times that level in phase two.

Member States will match EU funding, significantly increasing the public investment available to selected projects. Crucially, this public funding is intended as a catalyst rather than the full financing package: its purpose is to reduce investment risk and crowd in the substantial private capital required to construct, equip and operate Gigafactories at this scale.

Additional information: procurement of AI infrastructure

AI Gigafactories consortia may procure hardware during any of the two development phases of the AI Gigafactory from any hardware providers in Europe or likeminded countries. Part of this procurement may be dedicated to European start-ups and scale ups, with the AI Gigafactories providing concrete opportunities to strengthen the European digital supply chain. At the same time, and as a follow up of the EU-US trade deal, the Commission has signed three letters of intent with major US hardware providers, AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm to ensure consortia have seamless access to necessary hardware.

Useful links 

View all documents related to this call on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal. More information on AI Gigafactories and European Commission work in this area is available on the Commission's site via here. 

What's next? 

The call for tenders closes on 12 November 2026. 

Award decisions are expected around the start of 2027. Selected AI Gigafactories are expected to begin operations within a maximum of 18 months from the signature.

The big picture: related initiatives & legislation 

The new open call for tenders on AI Gigafactories works in synergy with other large scale EU initiatives and legislation that seek to ensure AI is ethical, trustworthy and aligned with core EU values - one of the cornerstones of the EU AI Act, in force since 2024. In April 2025, the Commission adopted the AI Continent Action Plan - a blueprint to 1) boost the continent's innovation capacity when it comes to AI and 2) turn EU strong points (like top-tier digital talent and robust industry supply chains) into AI Accelerators. The Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), part of the AI Action Plan, is also at work to enable the development of next-generation cutting-edge cloud and AI technologies, projected to triple EU’s data centre capacity within the next 5 to 7 years. The EU Apply AI Strategy further supports the adoption of AI across strategic economy sectors and reinforces European tech sovereignty.