by Egle Markeviciute EU Tech Loop with EuroNews
It’s published
Central and Eastern Europe remain unserved by data centres despite favorable conditions. A new mapping tool shows.
Now as the European Union Preparing to invest 20 billion euros At Artificial Intelligence (AI) GigaFactories, Poland and Baltics are pushing to secure investment and strengthen the digital sovereignty of the region.
Recently, International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy and AI Observatory Report has been published The availability of European data centres covers both existing and planned facilities.
The IEA interactive map highlights operation hubs with 500 megawatts (MW) capacity (blue), operation hubs with capacity over 500 MW (green) capacity, and planning hubs with capacity over 500 MW.
Data centers optimized for AI and HPC, especially specialized types of data centers, are known to be ideal for cold weather with abundant water resources.
However, while most hubs are currently concentrated in Western and Southern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe remain largely unserved except for the larger hubs planned in Poland, which are already in operation (colored blue).
The region’s Ai-optimized data centres are essential to the eastern side of the EU. They promote economic growth by creating a modest number of high-value jobs, add to the development of local AI ecosystems, reduce latency and improve performance in finance, cloud services, AI, and streaming.
Finally, optical benefits should not be overlooked. Investment and AI capabilities in central and Eastern European data centers send positive signals to foreign investors.
This is very important as private investment in local data centers remains modest despite local governments’ willingness to welcome the relevant foreign direct investment and relatively flexible conditions of both climate and management.
What’s next: AI GigaFactories
The European Commission’s decision on AI GigaFactories in the future (plan for four to five) is extremely important, indicating Bloc’s trust and willingness to invest in its east side.
AI GigaFactories is a cutting-edge, large-scale AI computing and data storage hub aimed at developing, training and deploying next-generation AI models and applications at hyperscale. For example, a model with hundreds of trillion parameters.
By integrating vast computing power, energy-efficient data centers, and AI-driven automation, these capabilities set new benchmarks for AI model training, inference, and deployment.
The committee announced in June that it had received 76 interest from 16 EU countries to build the AI Gigafactory.
Interestingly, the committee chose not to disclose the applicant’s identity, citing “confidential business information provided in an expression of interest.”
However, in June, Poland and the Baltic States jointly applied AI Gigafactory to signal both Polish ambitions and the cautiousness of the Baltic Sea on the capabilities of the Finland Lumi AI factory and accessibility of the Baltic family via “antennas”.
Poland and Baltics do not appear to be separated from this idea, and have recently begun to attract partners interested in building a wide range of AI and technology ecosystems, focusing on investments in projects and initiatives.