The European Commission has decided to extend the deadline for submitting applications for the call aimed at establishing up to seven artificial intelligence (AI) gigafactories in the European Union until December 3. The closure was initially set for November 12, but the total absence of proposals has forced Brussels to postpone the date, according to sources familiar with the process who spoke to Europa Press.
With this program, the community executive aims to mobilize more than 30 billion euros between public resources and private capital, in order to equip the community bloc with large infrastructures for the development of advanced AI models.
The Spanish public-private consortium, which includes the Government, the Generalitat of Catalonia, Banco Santander, ACS, Telefónica, and Multiverse Computing, has not yet formalized its candidacy to apply for one of these facilities. The same sources indicate that, for the moment, no other member state has also submitted projects for this call.
Brussels plans to inject up to 10 billion euros of European and national funding with the goal of attracting at least another 20 billion in private investment. The idea is that the future infrastructures will serve companies, SMEs, startups, research centers, universities, and public administrations to design, train, and execute state-of-the-art AI systems.
Consortia formed by companies, public entities, investors, and other partners will be able to participate in the call, with projects located in a single member state or spread across several countries. These proposals will be analyzed through a "competitive" procedure, according to the communication released by the Commission on July 30.
The funding will be structured through the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC), which together with 18 member states --including Spain-- will jointly contract access to the computing capacity of the selected gigafactories.
The tender contemplates two types of support to back up to seven projects, with European funds of up to 500 million euros per installation in a first modality and up to 1 billion in a second, distributed among the different phases of deployment.
Furthermore, the Commission has communicated the signing of letters of intent with the American companies AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm to facilitate the consortia the supply of the necessary hardware to launch these infrastructures, within the framework of the recent trade agreement between the EU and the United States.
After the delay of the call, which was initially set for November 12, the registration of applications will remain open until December 3. The Commission plans to adopt the award decisions at the beginning of 2027, with the intention of starting the construction of the first gigafactories in that same year.
"SPAIN IS GOING TO HOST ONE OF THE FIRST GIGAFACTORIES"
The Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, Óscar López, reiterated this Thursday his confidence that "Spain is going to host one of the first gigafactories" of AI in Europe, in a scenario marked by the proximity of the Spanish general elections, called for November 29.
He pointed this out during his speech at the ninth edition of the Alliance for the Development of Digital Talent Forum of the employers' association of the digital industry in Spain, Ametic, where he encouraged more young people to enroll in the more than 250 vocational training degrees related to artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and 'big data'.
In this context, López lamented that the Old Continent has fallen behind in the first phase of the global technological race, although he defended that Europe is still in time to compete in the next stage.
"Europe lost the first part of the technological race, but we do not have to lose the second part of that race. It is about societies, economies, knowing how to adapt and adopt AI on a massive scale," he emphasized.
The head of Digital Transformation insisted that the challenge is for societies and economies to be able to adapt and adopt AI on a "massive" scale.
This edition of the forum has addressed the main challenges of talent in a labor market in full transformation, within a sector where 90.4% of companies admit difficulties in finding qualified profiles, according to the 'Study on Salaries and Labor Policy' presented by the association during the day.
SPANISH CONSORTIUM
The Government of Pedro Sánchez approved last July an injection of 719 million euros, channeled through the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), known as "SEPI Digital", in the consortium that will promote an advanced AI gigafactory with which Spain will compete in the community call.
This contribution is joined by a voluntary contribution of 300 million euros, authorized in June by the Council of Ministers in favor of EuroHPC for services.
Banco Santander, ACS, and Telefónica are listed as the three reference private investors of the Spanish project and will jointly control 47% of the company's capital, with an individual participation of 15.67% each.
With the incorporation of Multiverse Computing, which will have 4%, the private block will reach 51% of the capital and will assume control of the company, while the central Executive will have 47.99% through the SETT and the Generalitat of Catalonia will initially have 1%.
The project foresees a dual headquarters in Móra la Nova (Catalonia) and in San Fernando de Henares (Madrid), will mobilize around 5 billion euros and will allow universities, SMEs, research centers, and Spanish institutions to significantly increase their research and innovation capacity, reinforcing the country's competitiveness in the race for artificial intelligence.