On Monday 30 June, European Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen, responsible for Tech Sovereignty, presented an initial overview of the responses received to the call for expressions of interest on ‘AI gigafactories’ launched in April at the same time as the ‘AI Continent Action Plan’ (see EUROPE 13618/10).
“We got 76 submissions proposing to set up AI gigafactories in 16 member states and across 60 different sites”, said the Vice-President. “And this exceeds far beyond our expectations”, she added.
These ‘gigafactories’, these new-generation factories whose technical specifications have yet to be specified - should boost Europe’s development capacity in artificial intelligence and put the EU back in the global race (see EUROPE 13651/2).
Admittedly, these are not official applications at this stage, but these expressions of interest “will play an important role in helping the European Commission and the Member States to identify and create a dynamic, non-binding list of potential candidates ready to establish world-class gigafactories throughout the European Union”, said the Commissioner.
The initial objective, which Henna Virkkunen says was well exceeded, was to attract enough applications to ensure the viability of “four or five projects”. In total, the potential candidates have expressed their intention to invest “a total indicative amount of more than €230 billion over the next three to five years”, she said.
As for the profiles of these players, while no list has been released, the Commission states that the vast majority are European, but that they also include “tech giants and financial investors”. “We are currently working on the selection criteria for the official call”, said the Commissioner.
However, when the Action Plan was presented in April, it was announced that the main coordinator of the bid “must be based in the EU or controlled by the EU” to protect European interests as far as possible.
The official call for applications is due to be launched by the Commission at the end of this year. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)