EU AI gigafactory bidders must resubmit funding tenders

Consortia bidding for EU AI gigafactory funding must resubmit their tenders after EuroHPC JU said every submission already in its system would not be considered for technical reasons. It extended the lot two deadline for large AI gigafactories to the start of February 2027. Bids in lot one, for medium gigafactories, are due Dec. 6, 2026.

EuroHPC JU said every draft and submitted tender in its system will not be considered, irrespective of the lot. It said: "For technical reasons all submissions currently in the system - draft and submitted tenders - will not be considered, irrespective of the lot for which they have been prepared." Data Center Dynamics first reported the resubmission requirement. The nature of the technical issue was not disclosed.

The reset means documentation already filed has to be rebuilt and refiled, and no EU co-funding commitment is in place for either lot. The large-project window now closes in early February 2027, two months after the Dec. 6 cut-off for medium projects.

Fully allocated, the Phase I envelopes come to €1 billion across the seven sites. The scheme was formally launched in July and first announced in 2025. Four smaller data centers are eligible for up to €100 million ($115 million) each in Phase I, with up to a further €400 million ($460 million) per project in Phase II contingent on lifting capacity at least three times. Three larger sites are each eligible for up to €200 million ($230 million) in Phase I and up to €800 million ($920 million) more in Phase II. The gigafactories are intended to give industry, academia and public authorities access to capacity for training, inference and frontier model training.

Consortia lining up bids include Volt in the Netherlands, Aether Infrastructure in France and AI&, a French consortium led by telco Iliad.