The European Commission is to spend billions of Euros on developing new AI supercomputing clusters.

At the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris this week, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the launch of InvestAI, an initiative to mobilize €200 billion ($209bn) for investment in AI, including a new European fund of €20bn ($20.9bn) for large clusters it is calling AI gigafactories.

The Commission said this “large AI infrastructure” is needed to allow open, collaborative development of the most complex AI models and to make “Europe an AI continent.”

The EU's InvestAI fund will finance four future “AI gigafactories” across the EU. The systems will be tailored to training the “most complex, very large, AI models,” and be equipped with around 100,000 of the latest-generation AI chips. Further details weren’t shared.

Von der Leyen said: “AI will improve our healthcare, spur our research and innovation and boost our competitiveness. We want AI to be a force for good and for growth. We are doing this through our own European approach – based on openness, cooperation, and excellent talent. But our approach still needs to be supercharged.”

She continued: “This is why, together with our member states and with our partners, we will mobilize 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.”

The initial funding for InvestAI will come from existing EU funding programs with digital components, such as Digital Europe Programme, Horizon Europe, and InvestEU. Member states will also be able to contribute funding.

Through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), the Commission previously announced plans for seven “AI factories” in December and will soon announce the next five, in a €10bn ($10.5bn) investment program.

Set to be deployed by the end of 2026, five new AI-optimized supercomputers will be housed in Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and Sweden. Meanwhile, Spain will see its MareNostrum 5 system upgraded to an AI factory, with another factory set to be established in Greece in association with the DAEDALUS supercomputer.

Precise details of what each AI factory will see deployed are yet to be shared.

Launched in 2018 and headquartered in Luxembourg, EuroHPC JU is a joint initiative between the EU, 35 European countries, and private partners to develop a supercomputing ecosystem in Europe. It has helped fund the deployment of nine supercomputers to date and multiple quantum computers.