The European Commission (EC) has authorized this Thursday, under the EU Merger Regulation, the establishment of a joint venture driven by ACS, Telefónica, Banco Santander, and the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), known as "SEPI Digital," with the aim of competing for the European AI gigafactory that the community executive will establish in some member state.
The community executive has determined that the notified operation does not raise competition concerns, due to the limited weight that the participating companies will have in the market resulting from this transaction. The file has been processed through the simplified concentration control procedure.
Thanks to this decision, the "joint venture" of the Spanish companies receives the backing of Brussels to present itself to the European Union's AI Gigafactories Initiative, integrated into the community technological sovereignty strategy, whose purpose is to strengthen and expand the own cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure on the continent.
The Council of Ministers gave its approval on June 16 to an investment of 719 million euros from the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function, channeled through "SEPI Digital," in the public-private consortium responsible for promoting this advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) gigafactory.
With this injection of resources, the Government launched an investment considered strategic to activate a large-scale industrial project and ensure that Spain is part of one of the most relevant European infrastructures in the field of AI.
In this context, "SEPI Digital" joined the shareholding of the company that plans to formalize the Spanish candidacy for the European call. Spain's proposal will be structured as a multi-site candidacy that includes the locations of Móra la Nova, in Tarragona, and San Fernando de Henares (Madrid), as planned sites to host the gigafactory.
Banco Santander, ACS, and Telefónica, the three reference private partners in the initiative, will exercise joint control over 47% of the capital of said company, with an individual participation of 15.67% each.