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 100000 last-generation AI chips, around four times more than the AI factories being set up right now. The gigafactories funded through InvestAI will be the largest public-private partnership in the world for the development of trustworthy AI.
Today, at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has launched InvestAI, an initiative to mobilise €200 billion for investment in AI, including a new European fund of €20 billion for AI gigafactories. „This large AI infrastructure is needed to allow open, collaborative development of the most complex AI models and to make Europe an AI continent.” – according to the press release.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “We want AI to be a force for good and for growth. 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.”
In her speech she added:
„Too often, I hear that Europe is late to the race – while the US and China have already gotten ahead. I disagree. Because the AI race is far from over. Truth is, we are only at the beginning. (…)
Too often, I have heard that we should replicate what others are doing and run after their strengths. I think that instead, we should invest in what we can do best and build on our strengths here in Europe.” (…)
„We will act in two main ways. First, we want to accelerate innovation. Europe has some of the world’s fastest public supercomputers. We are now putting them at the service of our best start-ups and scientists, so they can forge the AI we need. In just a few months we have set up a record of 12 AI factories. And we are investing EUR 10 billion in them.
This is not a promise – it is happening right now, and it is the largest public investment for AI in the world, which will unlock over ten times more private investment. Our goal is that every company, not only the big players, can access the computing power it needs. We want AI developers to compete based on how innovative they are, not just on their access to chips or the size of their financial firepower.
And now we are also bringing AI Factories to the next level, with AI Gigafactories. Very large data and computing infrastructure, to train very large models. We want to replicate the success story of the CERN laboratory in Geneva. CERN hosts the largest particle accelerator in the world. And it allows the best and the brightest minds in the world to work together. We want the same to happen in our AI Gigafactories.„
„I welcome the European AI Champions Initiative that pledges EUR 150 billion EUR from providers, investors and industry. Today, I can announce with our InvestAI initiative that we can top up by EUR 50 billion. Thereby we aim to mobilise a total of EUR 200 billion for AI investments in Europe. We will have a focus on industrial and mission-critical applications. It will be the largest public-private partnership in the world for the development of trustworthy AI.„
President of the European Investment Bank, Nadia Calviño, said: “Together with the EU Commission, the EIB Group is stepping up support for Artificial Intelligence, a key driver of innovation and productivity in Europe.”
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. Such next-generation models require extensive computing infrastructure for breakthroughs in specific domains such as medicine or science. 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 gigafactories funded through InvestAI will be the largest public-private partnership in the world for the development of trustworthy AI. They will serve the European model of cooperative, open innovation, with a focus on complex industrial and mission-critical applications. The goal is that every company, not only the biggest players, can access large-scale computing power to build the future.
InvestAI will include a layered fund, with shares of different risk and return profiles. The EU budget would derisk the investment of other partners. The Commission’s initial funding for InvestAI will come from existing EU funding programmes which have a digital component, such as Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe, and InvestEU. Member States can also contribute by programming funds from their Cohesion envelopes. Funding of AI gigafactories with a mix of grants and equity will serve as one of the pilot cases for strategic technologies announced in the Competitiveness Compass.
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 €10 billion, co-financed by the EU and the Member States, is already the largest public investment in AI in the world, and will unlock over ten times more private investment. It already provides massive access for start-ups and industry to supercomputers.
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