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EuroHPC JU AI Gigafactories

Per the EuroHPC website,1

What are EuroHPC AI Gigafactories?

AI Gigafactories are large-scale facilities dedicated to the development and training of next-generation AI models containing trillions of parameters.

Unlike the EuroHPC AI Factory program, which awarded funding to national supercomputer centers and required matching funds from nations on a 50-50 basis, Gigafactories are being led by private industry and formulated as public-private partnerships. EuroHPC will only contribute 17% of the capital investment,2 nations must match an additional 17% of capital, and the remaining 66% must be covered by the consortium. In addition, the consortium must cover all the operating costs. As a result, these AI gigafactories seem more like a public subsidy for private enterprise than the traditional EU-funded public resource.

Interestingly, the cost sharing requirement can be satisfied through “offtake” commitments, whereby a nation may commit to consume a percentage of the AI gigafactory’s cycles. For example, 17% of a €4B capex spend could also be satisfied if a state commits to buy €680M worth of GPU cycles from the resulting system.

Gigafactories have a total budget of €20B3 which will be awarded across up to five consortia.4

Consortia

Spain-Portugal

Spain and Portugal are partnering to propose a gigafactory sited at Móra la Nova with a 54 MW initial capacity and options to expand to 179 MW later.5 Telefónica is leading the consortium and will contribute 10-15% of the capital within the €4B budget.5 Other members include ACS (Spanish construction group) and SETT (state-owned investment company).4

France (AION)

Scaleway is leading the AION consortium bid for a French AI gigafactory.4 The eventual goal is an aggregate power of 200 MW and multiple clusters with “the equivalent of” 288,000 H100 GPUs.

The partner list is long, but notable members include:6

  • SiPearl
  • Bull
  • Hugging Face
  • GENCI
  • Inria

Germany

Germany appears to have multiple fragmented bidders.

Deutsche Telekom and Brookfield (Canadian investment company) have openly discussed a partnership.47 Schwarz Group may be involved.8

Separately, “Blue Swan” is a Bavarian consortium is bidding a gigafactory outside of Schweinfurt.9 There is no industry-led partner; the Bavarian state is leading the bid, LRZ will be the operator, and datacenter developer Investa is partnering for construction.10

Finland / Nordic

Nokia is leading a consortium of Estonia, Finland, and Latvia11 to deploy a gigafactory adjacent to the Lumi facility in Kajaani, Finland.12

Romania

Romania has formed the Black Sea AI Gigafactory consortium, but it does not appear to have a clear industry lead.13

Footnotes

  1. AI Gigafactories - The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) ↩

  2. Commission proposal Amending Council Regulation establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking: “The Union financial contribution referred to in Article 5 shall cover up to 17% to the capital expenditure (CAPEX) investments of the overall compute infrastructure of the AI Gigafactory, or to a pre-agreed guaranteed purchase of access time to the AI Gigafactory equivalent to a leased capacity of the CAPEX. One or more Participating States should at least match the Union contribution. The remaining investment as well as the operational expenditure (OPEX) of the AI Gigafactory shall be covered by the AI Gigafactory Consortium.” ↩

  3. EU launches InvestAI initiative to mobilise €200 billion ↩

  4. Telefónica preps final bid for AI gigafactory in Spain ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. This is how artificial intelligence factories are ↩ ↩2

  6. Iliad’s subsidiary Scaleway is launching a giant project to build a European “Gigafactory” for AI ↩

  7. DT sharpens AI gigafactory focus with Schwarz – report ↩

  8. Artificial intelligence: Telekom and Schwarz Group plan joint AI Gigafactory ↩

  9. Schweinfurt district: SchwAInfurt is now spelled with AI: What’s behind the planned AI factory in the Conn Barracks ↩

  10. Schweinfurt: “Blue Swan” Gigafactory: Geldersheim aims to rise to the top of Europe’s data sector ↩

  11. Estonia joins Nordic AI Gigafactory project — Invest in Estonia ↩

  12. Finland Stakes Its Claim in Europe’s AI Future with Bid for EU Gigafactory – Finnish AI Region ↩

  13. Romania readies to power Black Sea AI Gigafactory project with new nuclear reactors | Romania Insider ↩

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