Who Owns Intelligence?

On 30 July 2026, the European Commission launched a call to establish up to seven AI Gigafactories. The industry-led initiative is supported by up to €10 billion in EU and national funding and is expected to mobilise at least €20 billion in private investment. Its purpose is to expand access to infrastructure for training, inference and fine-tuning models.

The gigafactories are expected to combine advanced processors, software, cloud stacks, connectivity and energy-efficient data centres. They are intended to work alongside Europe’s network of 19 AI Factories, providing capacity to businesses, researchers, public authorities and start-ups.

This is significant because available compute affects which models can be developed and who can afford to use them. However, the Commission’s public description presents the gigafactories as infrastructure made up of several components: they are not simply a collection of European chips. With the call open and selection still to come, it is not possible to state which manufacturers will supply the processors or how dependent facilities will be on individual suppliers.

Technological sovereignty is not an on-or-off switch. It can involve data location, applicable jurisdiction, access to compute, chip design, fabrication, energy, models, software and the skills required to operate them. A country or region may control some layers and depend on others.

AI Gigafactories could strengthen access to computing capacity under European rules. On their own, they do not establish autonomy in semiconductor design or production, nor do they remove supply-chain dependencies. Acknowledging that limit does not diminish the initiative; it makes clear what it can achieve.

For European companies, this is an operational issue. Where is data for a critical process handled? Can the workload be moved or the provider changed? Do contracts clarify access, reuse and portability? What alternatives exist if the service becomes unavailable or its terms change?

The answers depend on more than the physical location of a data centre. Software control, commercial terms, continuity and the ability to migrate also matter. For a business, useful sovereignty includes the ability to preserve choice and continuity over time.

The Gigafactories could strengthen Europe’s capacity to develop and use advanced models. The next step is to clarify which other layers of the supply chain Europe wants to control, which it is willing to share and how dependencies will be made manageable.

The call was open when this paper was updated on 17 October 2026. The figures are targets announced by the Commission, not funding already fully spent or facilities already in operation. The discussion of sovereignty is an editorial analysis of the supply chain’s different layers.