The European Commission has opened a call for seven AI gigafactories across the EU, backed by €10 billion in public funding and designed to attract at least €20 billion in private investment. That’s the Brussels apparatus doing what it does best: turning public money into a subsidy stream for the next round of corporate infrastructure, all in the name of keeping up with the United States and China.
Public Money, Private Capture
The project aims to train next-generation AI technologies and narrow the technology gap with the United States and China. The language is all race, capacity, and strategic positioning. The reality is simpler. The Commission is asking states and taxpayers to bankroll a continent-wide buildout of computing power, chips and AI infrastructure, then hoping private capital will pile in for at least €20 billion more. Public risk, private gain. The usual arrangement, just with shinier branding.
Memoranda of understanding have been signed with Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm to support the effort. Those names matter. They’re not neutral technical partners floating above politics. They’re corporate actors with a direct stake in how Europe’s AI infrastructure gets built, who supplies it, and who gets locked into it. The Commission says the tender evaluation criteria include measures meant to avoid lock-in and ensure competitive bidding. That’s the official language of control dressed up as openness, a procurement ritual meant to reassure everyone that the market will remain fair while the market itself is being expanded with public funds.
The EU’s Tech Race, Paid For Below
The plan is part of a broader EU push to build out artificial intelligence capacity and strengthen the bloc’s position in a fast-moving global race for computing power, chips and AI infrastructure. That race is the point. Not public need. Not democratic control. Not whether workers, migrants, or anyone else will have any say over how these systems are used. The Commission frames the project as strategic necessity, but the structure is familiar: central institutions set the agenda, corporations line up for contracts, and everyone else is told this is how Europe stays competitive.
The EU likes to present itself as a civilising force, a rules-based counterweight to raw power. Then it opens a call for seven gigafactories and invites the biggest names in the industry to help shape the outcome. The contradiction isn’t accidental. It’s the system. The single market, competition rules, and industrial policy all work together when the goal is to deepen corporate capacity and keep the bloc in the global contest for dominance.
There’s no mention here of horizontal control, worker power, or public ownership. No sign that the people expected to live with the consequences of these systems will be asked what they want. Instead, the Commission is building another layer of infrastructure for a machine that already concentrates power upward, then calling it progress because it comes with a funding envelope and a tender process.
Fortress Europe Learns to Compute
The same institutions that police movement, enforce borders, and manage exclusion are now moving to scale up the digital machinery of the bloc. Different sector, same logic. Brussels decides. Corporations bid. Public money flows. The rest are expected to adapt.
Seven AI gigafactories. €10 billion in public funding. At least €20 billion in private investment. Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm at the table. The Commission says it wants to avoid lock-in. What it’s really building is another dependency structure, only this time wrapped in the language of innovation and strategic autonomy. The border regime has its fences and detention centres. The tech regime has its gigafactories. Both are built to concentrate power, and both ask the public to pay for the privilege.