EU to mobilise €200 billion for AI development
The European Commission has launched the InvestAI initiative, aiming to channel EUR 200 billion into artificial intelligence research, infrastructure, and deployment across the EU.
The program is designed to enhance Europe's technological sovereignty and competitiveness in AI while ensuring ethical and transparent development.
The initiative includes a dedicated EUR 20 billion European fund to establish AI gigafactories, which will serve as hubs for the open and collaborative development of advanced AI models.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen emphasised the strategic importance of AI for Europe’s future.
"AI will improve our healthcare, spur our research and innovation and boost our competitiveness. We want AI to be a force for good and for growth. We are doing this through our own European approach – based on openness, cooperation and excellent talent. But our approach still needs to be supercharged. This is why, together with our Member States and with our partners, we will mobilise unprecedented capital through InvestAI for European AI gigafactories. This unique public-private partnership, akin to a CERN for AI, will enable all our scientists and companies – not just the biggest - to develop the most advanced very large models needed to make Europe an AI continent," says Ursula von der Leyen, in a press release.
The EU's InvestAI fund will finance four future AI gigafactories across the EU. The new AI gigafactories will be specialised in training the most complex – very large – AI models. The gigafactories will have around 100,000 last-generation AI chips, around four times more than the AI factories being set up right now.
The Commission has already announced the initial seven AI factories in December and will soon announce the next five. The existing support for AI Factories of EUR 10 billion, co-financed by the EU and the Member States, is, according to the EU Commission, the largest public investment in AI in the world.
