The European Union is scaling back its plan to build AI-supporting data centers and is preparing a tender for smaller facilities than originally envisioned, Bloomberg reported . The June 18, 2026 report cited people familiar with the matter.
June 18, 2026 · EU AI Continent Action Plan
Europe Scales Down Its AI Gigafactory Dream
The EU has launched a data-center tender far smaller than its flagship vision — a retreat from the plan for five "AI Gigafactories" of 100,000+ processors each, as power grids, permits and climate goals collide with ambition.
100,000+
processors per site in the original Gigafactory vision
25,000
GPUs minimum per site in the actual first-phase tender
€20B
public investment once targeted per Gigafactory
Processors per site: vision vs. reality
Each block ≈ 25,000 processors · drawn to scale
100,000+
Original Gigafactory
25,000
Current tender (GPU class)
40,000
Current tender (processor class)
Takeaway: the largest facilities now sought are roughly a quarter the size of the original Gigafactory blueprint.
Why the retreat — the bottlenecks
7–10 yrs
grid-connection waits for large new sites
Unstable supply
renewable power can't reliably feed model training
Permits & opposition
delays plus tension with EU climate goals
Critics warn
Europe risks falling further behind the US and China — held back by underbuilt power infrastructure and bureaucratic regulation while rivals pour money into giant data centers.
The pragmatic case
A shift from single-minded mega-facilities toward realistically sized AI Factories on EuroHPC — building what the grid can actually power today.
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