EU announces massive AI investment of €200 billion

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the InvestAI initiative during the AI summit in Paris. This ambitious plan aims to mobilize €200 billion in AI investments. An important part of this is establishing a new European fund of 20 billion euros, specifically aimed at constructing AI gigafactories.

Four AI gigafactories

InvestAI will support the development of four AI gigafactories in the EU. These facilities will be designed for the training of extremely complex AI models that require enormous computing power. The applications will range from medical breakthroughs to scientific research. Each gigafactory will have around 100,000 advanced AI chips, which is four times as many as in current AI facilities. The goal is to make advanced computing power accessible to all companies, not just the biggest players.

Similar to CERN

This investment is the result of a collaboration between the EU, the member states, and the private sector. According to Von der Leyen, it is reminiscent of CERN, the leading European institute for particle physics, which was also founded with funding from both public and private sources within Europe.

Europe is lagging behind

Europe is still lagging behind in the field of AI, especially in comparison with the US. Both the government and venture capitalists have been investing hundreds of billions in the sector there for years. As a result, American companies dominate the market, and the most widely used AI products in Europe – such as ChatGPT from OpenAI – are mainly of American origin.

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