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“In April 2025, the EU called for expressions of interest in building four misleadingly-named "AI gigafactories" (only about 100 MW each, barely a dent). They received 76 applications. Now, over a year later, even this supremely unambitious plan is being heavily scaled back.”
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The claim is supported. The EU opened a non-binding call for expressions of interest in AI gigafactories on 9 April 2025 and received 76 submissions covering 60 sites across 16 member states, with respondents proposing facilities powered by roughly 100,000 advanced AI chips each. More than a year later, the plan is being substantially scaled back: only two of the five planned centres are fundable before 2028, the formal bidding deadline has slipped to July 2026, and the pool of interested companies has narrowed from around 70 to roughly 10, with at least two consortia reconsidering participation. The claim's framing of the original sites as 'only about 100 MW each' is not directly confirmed by reporting, which describes power needs in the 200–500 MW range; this is a meaningful but not central discrepancy, and the broader picture of an unambitious, shrinking programme is accurate.
The April 2025 call is documented in the European Commission's own public consultation, launched on 9 April 2025 by EuroHPC, which invited stakeholders to submit expressions of interest for AI Gigafactories by 20 June 2025. Multiple outlets confirm the result: 76 expressions of interest across 60 sites in 16 member states, with respondents outlining plans to acquire more than 3 million GPUs in total. Commission Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen described the response as exceeding expectations, and the Commission framed the facilities as extensions of the existing AI Factories initiative, each designed to support roughly 100,000 advanced AI chips per site for training frontier-scale models.
The claim that the plan is now being scaled back is well supported by recent reporting. The Next Web, writing on 2 June 2026, details a programme in clear retrenchment. The formal call for proposals has been pushed from May to July 2026, and only two of the five planned centres can receive EU subsidy money before the next budget cycle begins in 2028. The field of interested companies has collapsed from roughly 70 to about 10, and at least two consortia have publicly said they may pull out if the project is downsized. Several major players, including Germany's Schwarz Group, have moved on to build their own data centres rather than wait for EU funding that may arrive too late.
The financial scale reinforces the picture of a programme struggling to keep pace. The €20 billion EU envelope, of which only €4.1 billion comes directly from EU subsidies, is dwarfed by individual private-sector commitments: SoftBank's announced up to €75 billion for data centres in France alone, and US utilities' planned $1.4 trillion in grid investment for AI by 2030. Reporting from STL Partners notes that commercial gigafactory-scale projects, including Stargate Norway and the Microsoft-Nscale expansion in Portugal, are already breaking ground on European soil without EU support, further underscoring how the Commission-backed effort is being overtaken by private investment.
The one substantive factual discrepancy concerns power capacity. The original post describes each facility as 'only about 100 MW each,' but STL Partners reports the actual target is 200–500 MW of contracted low-carbon power per site, and Stargate Norway, a comparable commercial facility, is planned for 230 MW rising to 520 MW. The '100 MW' figure in the post is not supported by the reporting reviewed. However, this does not materially change the central claim: even at the larger power targets, the programme remains modest relative to US and Chinese competitors, and the scaling back described is well documented.
The broader narrative, that the EU opened an April 2025 consultation for AI gigafactories, received 76 applications, and is now substantially scaling back the plan more than a year later, holds up against available evidence. Independent reporting from Euractiv, The Next Web, and STL Partners all converge on this picture.
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8 reviewed sources behind this verdict.
Official EU record of the April 2025 public consultation launching the AI Gigafactory expression-of-interest process.
Confirms the 76-applications figure and describes the gigafactory vision at launch.
Reports Commission talks to consolidate or drop most of the 76 pitches.
Details the June 2026 scaling back, funding shortfalls, and shrinking bidder pool.
Independent analysis of the programme's design, power needs, and commercial competitors.
#### Recent in Network Tech. #### Recent in Wireless. #### Recent in IT Infrastructure. #### Recent in Services. The European Commission has taken the next step in its AI gigafactories initiative with the signing of amemorandum of understanding on funding and the announcement that the formal call for interest in building these facilities will be opened in early 2026 – somewhat later than the originally planned December timeline. "It's clear that the majority of the owners has to come from Europe
EU plans to fund four to five AI Gigafactories, consolidating 76 pitches into fewer large training hubs.
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