EU member states pledged 3 billion euros for AI gigafactories, plan also faces opposition
The funding model would make governments guaranteed customers for new AI compute hubs, aiming to give researchers and startups capacity to train large models.
Wednesday, 2 September 2026 15:16
Two-thirds of EU governments have provisionally pledged about €3 billion by late July to support bids for seven AI “gigafactories,” while nine countries have not committed funds, Politico Europe reported.
The plan is the bloc’s largest industrial policy push in the global race for AI infrastructure. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced last year that EU funding would support seven large AI compute hubs — three larger and four smaller sites — to help researchers and startups train very large AI models.
Before development starts, governments must commit to buying compute power from their national project, with commitments matching or exceeding EU funding. A senior Commission official said at the end of July that “the European Union and the member states come to co-finance part of the gigafactories,” while officials said public funding will not exceed 35 percent of total investment.
Eighteen of the EU’s 27 governments have promised money in some form. Germany has made the largest national commitment, at €1 billion, followed by Italy at €400 million, Greece at €350 million, Spain at €250 million and Portugal at €200 million; France, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic and Finland are each listed at €100 million, while smaller pledges include Sweden at €50 million and Lithuania at €1 million.
Some governments have balked at commitments of tens or hundreds of millions of euros while national budgets are stretched. The Dutch government said in a March letter that “in the current budget there's no room for committing to the required financial obligations,” and said it preferred “flexible and sustainable further development of AI infrastructure” without a large pre-reservation at future gigafactories.
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