The €200bn EU AI Continent Action Plan: Europe’s Big-Money Bid To Become A Global Leader In AI

The €200bn EU AI Continent Action Plan: Europe’s Big-Money Bid To Become A Global Leader In AI

On April 9, the European Commission – the executive arm of the EU – announced the AI Continent Action Plan: a comprehensive strategy to position Europe as a leader in AI. The plan operationalizes €200 billion in funding from the InvestAI initiative across five main areas: building large-scale AI computing infrastructure, increasing access to data, promoting AI in strategic sectors, strengthening Europe’s AI talent pool and simplifying regulatory implementation. By addressing and investing in these areas, Europe is looking to bolster its AI sovereignty through ownership of the entire AI life cycle. 

Infrastructure development is a major focus of the plan, with the EU aiming to triple its data centre capacity within seven years to encourage sovereign cloud adoption. Meanwhile, €20 billion has been allocated to five AI gigafactories to build frontier AI models, with artificial general intelligence (AGI) stated as an explicit goal (see Verdantix Market Trends: Enterprise AI Adoption Strategies).

Verdantix expects the plan to increase availability of powerful, local development tools (such as high-performance processors) and enable cheaper compute. European businesses will also have access to organized and proprietary data through the Data Union Strategy, which aims to create a ‘single market’ for information, allowing users to access and share data at scale. Considering the European data economy accounts for 4% of EU GDP, the strategy should drive internal competition while offering European firms an advantage over their counterparts in other regions. Our analysis finds that the ease of information flow enabled by the Data Union Strategy particularly benefits organizations in highly regulated verticals, such as healthcare, primarily due to long-standing difficulties in obtaining extensive data. 

The AI Continent Action Plan will also simplify implementation of the EU AI Act (see Verdantix Market Insight: The Evolving AI Regulation Landscape). Based on the EU’s positioning, we expect this to positively impact AI innovation by streamlining compliance through harmonized benchmark standards and an AI Service Desk for SMEs. Because of this, vendors within the EU market may be seen as more trusted by organizations making AI purchasing decisions, encouraging the adoption of European AI solutions. 

Overall, the EU AI Action Plan will promote Europe’s brand as a champion of responsible AI, balancing innovation and regulation. Meanwhile, OpenAI is considering investing part of its $500 billion Stargate AI project into the European market, which would inject significant private capital to further bolster the EU’s AI landscape. However, while the EU labours over finalizing its roadmap for the plan (expected late 2025), the US and China push further ahead. The delta in investments – including NVIDIA’s $500 billion supercomputer investment announcement and Alibaba’s $50 billion three-year investment plan – and the head start market-leading AI firms have both add barriers to the EU’s goal of competing internationally.

For more insight on AI enterprise adoption within a changing regulatory landscape, visit the Verdantix AI Applied research page.