The European Commission opened a call on 30 July 2026 for up to seven AI gigafactories, the largest compute build the bloc has attempted. The structure targets roughly 30 billion euros in total investment: about 10 billion in combined European and national public funding, intended to pull in about 20 billion from private investors. Seventy six potential consortia had expressed preliminary interest. Construction is expected to begin in early 2027 with operations from mid 2028. Germany is among the candidate host countries, alongside Italy, France, Poland, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Portugal and Spain.
There is a financing caveat that the Commission has not hidden. Brussels can currently commit about 1 billion euros. The rest depends on the next Multiannual Financial Framework. As one Commission official put it, "We cannot pre-empt the decisions about the next MFF. We gave you our best estimate of how much money we would have from the next MFF to be able to support phase two."
Germany is bidding into that call from a national position it set out earlier in the year. Its National Data Centre Strategy, adopted in March 2026, targets a doubling of overall data centre capacity and a fourfold increase in AI and high performance computing capacity by 2030, with a planned domestic AI gigafactory in the range of 100,000 high performance GPUs.
The regulatory half arrived first. On 10 February 2026 the federal government adopted its draft AI Market Surveillance and Innovation Promotion Act, known as KI-MIG, which sets Germany's supervisory architecture under the EU AI Act. Germany chose a hybrid model rather than a new agency. The Bundesnetzagentur becomes the default market surveillance authority and the single point of contact with the EU AI Office, runs the central complaints office, and must operate at least one AI regulatory sandbox with priority access for small and medium enterprises, start ups and research institutions.
Sector regulators keep their turf. Authorities already responsible for harmonised product legislation, including medical devices, machinery and radio equipment, retain competence over AI systems in those domains, with special provisions for the media authorities and for BaFin in financial services.
On penalties, the EU AI Act fine schedule applies directly. KI-MIG adds supplementary national fines of up to 50,000 euros for violations not covered by Article 99 of the Act. Enforcement of the AI Act by the Commission's AI Office together with national authorities began on 2 August 2026, and Germany missed the earlier designation deadline before its draft was adopted.
Put the two tracks together and the European position becomes clear. The compute is a subsidised industrial project with a funding gap that will not be resolved until the next budget cycle. The supervision is already live, already assigned to an existing agency, and already carrying fines. Capability is a plan. Compliance is a fact.
For operators, the near term question is not whether the gigafactories get built. It is which authority reviews a given system in Germany, and the answer for most general purpose deployments is now the Bundesnetzagentur.