EU AI Gigafactories call explained: lots, money, timeline, limits

The EU's AI Gigafactories call, opened on 30 July 2026, invites bids to build up to seven very large AI data centres. Public funding can reach 10 billion euros (EU plus national), with at least 20 billion euros of private money expected. Bids close on 12 November 2026, and selection is expected in early 2027.

This is a long guide to the call: what it says, what it leaves out, and how to read the figures without overstating them. All facts come from Commission and EuroHPC pages or from outlets that reproduced them, and each is labelled. Nothing here predicts who will win, and nothing is investment advice.

Key numbers at a glance

• 7: maximum number of gigafactories (EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, call launch, 30 July 2026).
• 10 billion euros: maximum combined EU and national public funding (Commission, July 2026).
• 20 billion euros: minimum expected private investment (Commission, July 2026).
• 4 and 3: maximum number of projects in Lot 1 and Lot 2 (call text as reported, 30 July 2026).
• 100 million euros plus 400 million: maximum EU funding per Lot 1 project, phase one and phase two.
• 200 million euros plus 800 million: maximum EU funding per Lot 2 project, phase one and phase two.
• 18: member states that signed the joint procurement agreement (Commission, 30 July 2026).
• 12 November 2026: bid deadline (EuroHPC, 30 July 2026).
• Early 2027: expected selection of projects (EuroHPC, 30 July 2026).
• 18 months: the longest period from contract signature to the start of operations (Commission, 30 July 2026).
• Over 100,000: advanced AI processors expected per facility (Commission AI Factories page, updated 12 August 2026).
• 19 and 13: AI Factories and AI Factory Antennas already in the EU network (same page).
• 12: supercomputers the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking says it has deployed, including JUPITER in Germany and Alice Recoque in France (EuroHPC, 30 July 2026).
• 76: expressions of interest received in the 2025 consultation, covering 60 sites in 16 member states (Commission, 30 June 2025).

What a gigafactory is meant to be

Start with the smaller thing it builds on. An AI Factory is an ecosystem around an AI-optimised supercomputer, set up through EuroHPC, the EU body that buys supercomputers jointly with member states. The network now has 19 of them plus 13 Antennas, which extend access to more countries.

A gigafactory is a different scale. The Commission describes each one as holding over 100,000 advanced AI processors and able to train models with trillions of parameters. A parameter is one of the learned numbers inside an AI model, and "trillions" means the largest frontier-style models. The EuroHPC call text says the facilities will be for training, fine-tuning and running models (inference) for public and private users, with a focus on start-ups, scale-ups and small and medium companies.

The model is also different. The EuroHPC call describes an industry-led, service-oriented model. Consortia, or special purpose vehicles (SPVs, companies set up just to own and run one project), build and operate the sites. The EU and member states do not run them. Instead, public bodies jointly buy access time, which the Commission calls acting as an anchor customer. An anchor customer is a first large buyer whose commitment makes a project easier to finance. That is the core bargain: public demand today in exchange for capacity in Europe tomorrow.

The two lots in detail

The call is split into two lots, based on how big a facility must be relative to the strongest AI Factory in Europe today.

Lot 1 covers up to four projects:

• Phase one: up to 100 million euros of EU funding per project. The facility must deploy at least as many advanced AI processors as Europe's most powerful current AI Factory.
• Phase two: up to a further 400 million euros per project. Capacity must rise to at least three times that starting level.

Lot 2 covers up to three projects:

• Phase one: up to 200 million euros of EU funding per project. The facility must deploy up to twice the processors of Europe's most powerful AI Factory.
• Phase two: up to a further 800 million euros per project. Capacity must reach at least four times that level.

These details come from the Commission press release text as reproduced by a Hungarian county chamber of commerce and by trade outlet w.media, and from the EU Perspectives report of 30 July 2026. They agree with each other.

The per-project caps can be added up. If every project in both lots won and drew its maximum, EU funding would total 4 times 500 million euros for Lot 1 plus 3 times 1,000 million for Lot 2, or 5 billion euros. That is simple arithmetic on the stated caps, not a figure the Commission has published. The headline of up to 10 billion euros covers EU and national money together, and the call does not publish how it splits between the two.

The EuroHPC call page adds one more rule on money: successful projects will receive varying levels of EU and national co-funding, based on the size and range of the sovereign services they deploy. In other words, the caps are ceilings, and the final award depends on what a consortium offers.

Why the lots are sized against an existing machine

The call does not state a processor count for each lot. It sizes each one against "Europe's most powerful current AI Factory". That is a moving reference. Neither the EuroHPC call page nor the Commission's AI Factories page names that AI Factory or says how many processors it holds, so "three times" cannot be turned into a number of chips from the published material. The separate statement that each facility will hold over 100,000 processors comes from the Commission's AI Factories page, and the official pages do not set the two descriptions side by side.

That matters when you read news coverage. A headline saying "100,000 chips" or "four times the biggest machine" is repeating one of two descriptions. Neither is a signed specification.

How the call got here

The call did not appear from nothing. The Commission first tested demand with an informal call for expressions of interest, which closed on 20 June 2025. On 30 June 2025 it reported 76 responses from 16 member states, covering 60 different sites. The respondents, it said, foresaw buying at least three million latest generation GPUs in total. They included data centre operators, telecoms companies, power suppliers, technology partners and financial investors.

Those responses were not bids. The Commission described them as early insights to build a dynamic, non-binding roster of potential candidates, and it said it would not disclose who responded. At the time it planned to open the formal call in the fourth quarter of 2025. The call actually opened on 30 July 2026, roughly seven months later than that plan.

Two points follow for anyone reading coverage. First, the 76 responses and the three million GPUs describe interest in 2025, not commitments. Second, the gap between interest and the cap of seven projects means most of those 60 sites will not become gigafactories under this call.

Where the money comes from

Three layers of money appear in the sources, and they are easy to mix up.

First, the public funding: up to 10 billion euros from the EU and member states. The EuroHPC page says part of the public financing comes from the current seven-year EU budget (the multiannual financial framework, or MFF, running to 2027) and the bulk from the next one, covering 2028 to 2035. The 2028 to 2035 budget framework had not been agreed as of 19 October 2026, so a large share of the promised public money depends on a future decision.

Second, the private money: at least 20 billion euros expected. This is an expectation set by the Commission, not a pledge by named companies.

Third, the older headline. In February 2025 the Commission announced InvestAI, with an ambition of 200 billion euros. A CSIS analysis from 22 April 2025 reports that 150 billion of this was a private pledge by the AI Champions Initiative, a group of over 60 European companies, and 50 billion was Commission money, with 20 billion euros dedicated to gigafactories. Those figures are from CSIS, not from the Commission's gigafactory pages.

So the gigafactory pot was described as 20 billion euros in 2025, and is now described as up to 10 billion euros public plus at least 20 billion private in 2026. These are different framings, not necessarily a contradiction, but no official page reconciles them. Euronews, reporting on Mistral on 8 September 2026, still describes InvestAI as having a 200 billion euro headline commitment and says the sites are not expected to operate until 2027 or 2028.

Timeline

• 30 July 2026: call launched.
• 12 November 2026: submissions close, through the EU Tenders and Funding Portal.
• Early 2027: selection expected.
• 2027: construction can begin once contracts are signed (EU Perspectives, 30 July 2026).
• Within 18 months of signature: operations expected to start.

Put together, those terms imply operations from late 2028 at the latest for a project signed in early 2027, and the call sets 18 months as the outer limit. Euronews's "2027 or 2028" is looser than that. The call text is the firmer reference.

Who can bid, and who is signed up to buy

Bids come from consortia or SPVs containing companies, public entities, investors and other partners. A gigafactory may be in one member state on one site, on several sites, or spread across several member states as a distributed project. The Commission expects sites in at least seven member states.

Eighteen member states have signed the joint procurement agreement with EuroHPC: Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. Signing the agreement means a country can take part in buying compute. It does not mean it will host a site. Neither the call pages nor the press reports cited here name any bidders or candidate sites, and the Commission said in 2025 it would not disclose who expressed interest. Any list of "favourites" you see elsewhere is speculation.

Hardware and the trade angle

The call allows consortia to buy hardware from providers in Europe or in "likeminded countries", and part of the hardware may be reserved for European start-ups and scale-ups. The Commission also signed three letters of intent, with AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm, to help consortia access hardware. The Commission text reproduced by the Hungarian chamber links this to the EU-US trade deal. A letter of intent is a statement of intention, not a purchase order, and the pages give no quantities or prices.

The call itself names no chip model and no power capacity. It mentions "energy-efficient data centres", high-capacity storage, ultra-fast networks, secure cloud access and AI support services. For anyone expecting a megawatt number, there isn't one.

The power gap

A site holding tens of thousands of top-end chips draws power in the hundreds of megawatts. To give a sourced comparison, Stargate Norway's planned first phase is 230 MW for 100,000 Nvidia GPUs (Nscale press release, 31 July 2025). That is a private project, not part of this call, and it is a target, not a result. It shows only the order of magnitude: a 100,000 processor site is a power station sized load.

This is why the call's silence on energy is notable, and why the separate Cloud and AI Development Act matters. That proposal (3 June 2026) would create acceleration zones with a single baseline permit, but it excludes grid connection permits from that bundle. The companion explainer on Europe's data centre power and permitting limits covers it.

What is firm and what is uncertain

Firm, from the primary pages:

• The call exists, with the lot structure, per-project maxima, 12 November deadline and early 2027 selection.
• Council Regulation (EU) 2026/150 expanded the EuroHPC mandate to cover gigafactories and quantum technologies, according to the EuroHPC call page.
• Eighteen member states signed the joint procurement agreement.
• The 2025 consultation drew 76 expressions of interest for 60 sites in 16 member states (Commission, 30 June 2025).

Uncertain:

• The number of chips per site in absolute terms, because lots are sized against a moving reference.
• The split of the 10 billion euros between the EU and national budgets.
• How much of the public money depends on the 2028 to 2035 budget.
• Whether private investment of 20 billion euros materialises. It is an expectation.
• The power source and grid connection for each site, since the call text names none.
• Which bids will be submitted.

What to watch next

• The bid deadline of 12 November 2026 and any announcement of how many bids arrived.
• Selection in early 2027, and whether fewer than seven projects are chosen. The call says "up to" seven.
• Whether national governments announce co-funding, since the call depends on it.
• Grid connection announcements for any named site.
• Parliament and Council positions on the Cloud and AI Development Act, because permitting speed affects every site.

What this means for customers and builders

If you are a start-up or small company, the call says gigafactory capacity is aimed at you through the service model, but access terms and prices have not been published. For now, the existing AI Factories offer free, customised support to small companies, and that is the route that exists today.

If you are a software team in Europe, the practical effect is slow. Contracts are not expected before early 2027, and operations follow construction, so capacity from this call is a 2027 to 2028 prospect at best. Plan for the compute you can buy now, and treat gigafactory time as a later option. Whatever you run, keep an inventory of the software you depend on; Safeguard's SBOM and dependency scanning, with a free scan at https://gold.safeguard.sh/scan, is one way to start.

For how other AI compute deals are structured, see OpenAI's compute commitments and Stargate and Anthropic's compute commitments. The Europe AI infrastructure overview puts this call next to the AI Factories, the UK programme and private projects, and the UK AI Growth Zones explainer covers the parallel British plan.

Quick check

Sources

• EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, call launch, 30 July 2026: https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/eurohpc-joint-undertaking-launches-ai-gigafactories-call-2026-07-30_en
• Commission press release text reproduced by the Hajdu-Bihar County Chamber, 30 July 2026: https://hbkik.hu/?p=90105
• w.media, EU planning seven AI gigafactories, 31 July 2026: https://w.media/eu-planning-seven-ai-gigafactories-with-e30-billion-investment/
• EU Perspectives, Europe's AI Gigafactory race, 30 July 2026: https://euperspectives.eu/2026/07/europes-ai-gigafactory-race-is-on-who-will-win-it/
• European Commission, AI Factories page (updated 12 August 2026): https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-factories
• EuroHPC, AI Factories: https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/ai-factories_en
• European Commission, 76 respondents express interest in AI Gigafactories, 30 June 2025: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/overwhelming-response-76-respondents-express-interest-european-ai-gigafactories-initiative
• CSIS, The EU AI Continent Action Plan, 22 April 2025: https://www.csis.org/analysis/eu-ai-continent-action-plan
• Euronews, Mistral Series D, 8 September 2026: https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/08/mistral-ai-raises-record-3-billion-in-samsung-led-funding-round
• Nscale, Stargate Norway, 31 July 2025: https://nscale.com/press-releases/stargate-norway-nscale-aker-openai
• Commission proposal COM(2026) 502, 3 June 2026 (Eerste Kamer copy): https://www.eerstekamer.nl/nonav/bijlage/20260609/com_2026_502_proposal_for_a/document3/f=/vmy8optarooc.pdf

Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.