EU Opens Tender for Seven AI Gigafactories, Poland Bids for One

The EU's European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has formally launched a tender to build seven European AI gigafactories. It's the moment Poland's Ministry of Digital Affairs had been waiting for, opening a fifteen-week window in which private consortia can submit bids to build and operate massive computing centers dedicated to training and running advanced AI models.

What changed

Until now, Poland had only declared its intent to join the EU program and secured funding at the national level. The government adopted a resolution guaranteeing more than 400 million zloty, and Deputy Minister Standerski signed an agreement paving the way for participation in the tender. Now the tender itself has launched at the European level, meaning real competition among consortia is beginning over where and by whom each facility will be built.

EuroHPC JU split the competition into two categories. Four medium-scale gigafactories will require at least 75,000 of the latest AI accelerators, while three large facilities will need at least 100,000. That's a level of computing power far beyond typical commercial data centers operating in Europe today.

Conditions for consortia

Private consortia made up of investors, digital infrastructure operators, and technology suppliers can bid to build and operate the gigafactories. Companies from outside the European Union may join such consortia, but the consortium leader and the data center operator must be fully controlled by European entities. Data processing itself and the physical infrastructure must be located within the EU.

The math for Poland

Poland is bidding for Lot 1, the medium-scale project, where total public funding across both investment phases could reach one billion euros. If a Polish consortium wins, it would be the largest ICT investment in the country's history. Under the funding model, Poland and the European Commission would each pre-purchase 17 percent of the gigafactory's compute power, guaranteeing demand for the winning operator, while the remaining two-thirds of capacity would go to commercial sale.

I signed the Joint Procurement Agreement today, which formally marks Poland's accession to the AI gigafactory initiative - Dariusz Standerski, deputy minister of digital affairs

Regional rivalry

Poland isn't the only country in the region interested in the project. Lithuania has formally declared its intent to buy compute power from a potential Polish gigafactory, and Croatia is considering a similar move. The Czech Republic, meanwhile, is negotiating a joint cooperation option that would require a shared business plan between companies from both countries. It's a sign that even countries without their own gigafactory want to secure access to EU AI compute power rather than rely entirely on foreign clouds.

The whole initiative fits into the European Commission's broader plan, announced earlier, to build a network of AI gigafactories equipped with tens of thousands of the latest graphics chips, infrastructure with computing power many times greater than today's typical newly opened data centers. Brussels wants to use this to reduce European companies' dependence on American and Chinese cloud providers for AI computing.

What's next

Consortia now have fifteen weeks to prepare and submit bids and choose locations within the European Union. The tender is set to be settled and contracts with winners signed in early 2027, with the gigafactories becoming operational in 2028. For Poland, that means over a year of waiting to find out whether a domestic consortium actually secures the funding and builds one of the seven facilities, or whether Warsaw ends up merely buying compute power from a gigafactory built in another country.