Brussels is stepping up its efforts to close the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China.
The European Commission has announced plans to establish six new large-scale AI factories across the continent, marking a significant expansion of the EU’s high-performance computing infrastructure.
The new sites will be located in Czechia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the Netherlands, according to the Commission’s statement.
These facilities will give start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, and research institutions direct access to AI-optimized supercomputers, enabling them to train and deploy advanced machine learning models at European scale.
Over €500 million in joint funding
The project will receive more than €500 million in combined funding from the EU and participating member states.
The initiative is part of the bloc’s broader strategy to strengthen technological independence, reduce reliance on non-European providers, and accelerate AI innovation within the single market.
Officials say the goal is to create a “European AI ecosystem” where computing power, data access, and ethical standards are developed and maintained locally — ensuring competitiveness and compliance with EU regulations such as the AI Act.
Germany’s role and existing projects
While no additional German site has been approved in this latest round, Germany remains a key player in the EU’s AI expansion.
In 2024, Stuttgart was selected as the location for the “HammerHai” AI supercomputing project, one of Europe’s flagship centers for industrial AI applications.
German companies including Deutsche Telekom, Ionos, and Schwarz IT (the technology arm of Lidl and Kaufland) have expressed interest in hosting future AI “gigafactories” — large-scale facilities designed for even greater computing capacity.
However, the European Commission has not yet finalized decisions on those next-generation sites.
Strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty
With this latest expansion, the EU will operate 19 AI factory locations in total, forming a distributed network of supercomputing hubs dedicated to innovation, sustainability, and open access for European businesses.
By investing heavily in digital infrastructure, Brussels hopes to position Europe as a credible third force in the global AI race — less dependent on American tech giants and more capable of developing homegrown solutions that align with European values of transparency and data protection.
