The European Union’s €20 billion ($23.3 billion) plan to build five AI gigafactory data centers is faltering, with Bloomberg reporting on June 2 that repeated delays and funding uncertainty have eroded interest among potential partners. The bidding process, originally scheduled for May, has been pushed to July, according to Polish digital minister Dariusz Standerski. The pool of interested companies has collapsed from approximately 70 to about 10 groups expected to submit bids — each country limited to one. A critical structural constraint: only two of the five planned centers can receive EU funding before the bloc’s next budget cycle begins in 2028, with remaining tranches earmarked for 2030. The funding model relies on €4.1 billion in EU subsidies matched by host member states, with private investors covering the remainder — less than half the total coming from public sources. Interface policy researcher Maria Nowicka captured the frustration: “I’ve lost count” of the delays, she told Bloomberg, adding there is currently “almost no clear direction.”
Several major potential participants have scaled back. In Germany, Schwarz Group (Lidl’s parent) had expressed interest in leading a consortium but enthusiasm has “clearly decreased,” with the company now building its own Berlin-area data center independently. Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges said this week the company would only participate if industrial and government clients guarantee demand; it is separately doubling Nvidia GPU capacity at its Munich facility to 20,000 chips. Spain’s Telefónica COO said in late May that the company does not need to be a primary investor and is open to a 10-15% stake. Mistral AI is in talks to join a €10 billion French consortium but CEO Arthur Mensch criticized the program’s per-country structure, saying credible European AI infrastructure must be “pan-European and at a much larger scale.” The scale comparison with private capital is striking: SoftBank alone pledged up to €75 billion for French data centers — more than three times the entire EU programme — while Meta is building a single Texas facility for $13 billion.