Europe not late to the AI race, von der Leyen insistsEurope not late to the AI race, von der Leyen insists

The announcement came from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the AI Action Summit in Paris, at which she also insisted that the European Union is not lagging behind its global rivals in AI.

"Too often, I hear that Europe is late to the race, while the US and China have already gotten ahead," von der Leyen said. "I disagree. Because the AI race is far from over. Truth is, we are only at the beginning...And global leadership is still up for grabs."

There is plenty going on worldwide in terms of AI technology and infrastructure development; we rarely go hours, let alone days, without some sort of major data centre announcement, for example. But you could be forgiven for thinking that the so-called AI race is about little more than governments and political leaders making funding pledges with many zeros in many cases by grouping together various ongoing initiatives from disparate sources or re-badging elements of broader technological innovation.

This week it's Europe's turn. Von der Leyen used the AI Action Summit to present InvestAI, which the Commission describes as "an initiative to mobilise €200 billion for investment in AI."

Mobilise, eh? There are clearly all sorts of funding pots and initiatives at play here. We have involvement from the European Investment Bank (EIB), as evidenced by a supportive quote from its president Nadia Calviño, but much of the money has clearly already been pledged – and doubtless captured many headlines – via existing EU programmes.

The Commission explains it thusly:

"InvestAI will include a layered fund, with shares of different risk and return profiles. The EU budget would derisk the investment of other partners. The Commission's initial funding for InvestAI will come from existing EU funding programmes which have a digital component, such as Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe, and InvestEU. Member States can also contribute by programming funds from their Cohesion envelopes."

The most well-defined element of InvestAI is its AI gigafactories fund, valued at €20 billion. The fund will finance the development of four gigafactories across the EU that will specialise in training complex, very large AI models that will require extensive computing infrastructure. We don't yet know where these factories will be located, or indeed when they might emerge; the Commission was no more specific than "future."

They will support breakthroughs in areas such as medicine or science, the Commission said, and will have around 100,000 "last-generation" AI chips, which is four times as many as AI factories currently being set up.

Funding will come via a mix of grants and equity, and the scheme will serve as pilot case for other strategic technologies under the EU Competitiveness Compass announced last month as a sort of roadmap to enable the bloc to compete on the global stage.

The EU has already started work on current-generation AI factories. The Commission detailed its first seven AI factories in December and will soon announce the next five, it said, all backed by a €10 billion funding pot provided by Brussels and the member states.

"This is not a promise – it is happening right now, and it is the largest public investment for AI in the world, which will unlock over ten times more private investment," von der Leyen said.

The gigafactories represent the next step...whenever the EU decides to actually take it.

"We want to replicate the success story of the CERN laboratory in Geneva. CERN hosts the largest particle accelerator in the world. And it allows the best and the brightest minds in the world to work together. We want the same to happen in our AI Gigafactories," von der Leyen said.

It's a laudable aim, albeit one that at this stage is little more than a bid to steal the AI limelight from the US and China.