Spain approves €719 million bid for AI gigafactory project

Spain committed €719 million to an artificial intelligence gigafactory bid on June 16, betting that public money can help pry open a larger European pot and give the country a foothold in high-end computing. The move is designed to cut dependence on foreign technology, expand access to scarce AI infrastructure and make Spain part of Europe’s push for digital sovereignty.

The money will go into a company created to submit Spain’s proposal under the European Commission’s InvestAI initiative, and the state will become a shareholder in that public-private vehicle. That matters because the project is being treated less like a normal industrial contract and more like strategic infrastructure, with the government seeking a role in the ownership structure as it competes for European support.

What €719 million buys, however, is only part of the story. Earlier reporting on Spain’s original AI gigafactory plan put the total cost at around €5 billion in public and private investment and described a facility built to house about 100,000 graphics processing units. By that measure, the state’s new commitment looks more like a down payment on a far larger buildout than a complete answer to Europe’s compute deficit.

The Spanish bid is now a multi-site proposal centered on Móra la Nova in Tarragona and San Fernando de Henares near Madrid. The Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Service said the aim is to boost local innovation and competitiveness, while Óscar López said the investment in high-performance computing would help Spanish scientists access infrastructure that is difficult to obtain. Additional coverage described AI gigafactories as massive centers built to hold hundreds of thousands of GPUs, underscoring the scale of the computing capacity Spain wants to help finance.

The timing places Spain squarely inside a wider European contest. The European Commission launched InvestAI in February 2025 with a goal of mobilizing €200 billion in AI investment, including a €20 billion fund for AI gigafactories. The Commission said the call drew 76 expressions of interest from 16 member states across 60 sites, and the European Investment Bank said the facility is meant to support up to five gigafactories across the European Union.

Spain’s bid also has a regional dimension. On March 6, 2026, Spain and Portugal agreed to explore an Iberian bid for one of the first European AI gigafactories, widening the project beyond a national industrial play. If selected, the facility would rank among a small number of such sites in the EU, making the result a test of whether Europe can build enough domestic compute to matter, not just announce that it intends to.