EU pools up to €30 billion for AI gigafactories while US tech giants casually spend 20 times more

EU pools up to €30 billion for AI gigafactories while US tech giants casually spend 20 times more Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Jul 31, 2026 Key Points EU The European Commission has opened bidding to build up to seven so-called AI gigafactories across Europe. The goal is to sharply expand Europe's AI computing capacity. Up to 10 billion euros in EU and national funding is expected to draw at least 20 billion euros in private investment. The facilities would give startups, companies, research institutions, and government agencies access to the infrastructure needed to train and run large AI models. Eighteen member states, including Germany and France, are taking part. The Commission has also signed letters of intent with AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm to secure access to hardware. Applications are due November 12, 2026, with construction of the first facilities set to begin in 2027. The project is part of the EU's "AI Continent" strategy. For comparison, major U.S. tech companies alone plan to spend more than $600 billion on data centers this year, and that figure keeps rising. Europe's total package of around 30 billion euros is roughly 20 times smaller. If all that computing power is actually needed, Europe's investment would be a drop in the bucket.AdDEC_D_Incontent-1Ad AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now Source: EU Ask about this article… Search