Spain approves €719m contribution to Catalan AI gigafactory project

The Spanish cabinet has approved the allocation of €719 million to a planned artificial intelligence (AI) gigafactory in Móra la Nova, Ribera d'Ebre county, southern Catalonia.

The investment, first reported by La Vanguardia on Tuesday and confirmed by the Catalan News Agency (ACN), will be channelled through the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT).

The project, which will compete in a European Union funding call, will also receive private investment from companies including Telefónica, ACS and Banco Santander.

Sources at the European Commission told ACN that a "briefing session" on the project is being held on Tuesday, although the official call for applications will not be published until July.

"This investment is a commitment by the government of Spain to technological sovereignty, reindustrialisation and leadership in reliable and sustainable AI. Having European access to advanced computing means that our SMEs and large companies can innovate more quickly and compete better; that our science has an infrastructure that today is scarce and very expensive, and that administrations can develop more advanced and secure public services," the Spanish government said in a statement.

A Catalonia-Madrid partnership

In January, Spain's digital transformation minister Óscar López announced that Madrid would be added to the Móra la Nova bid in order to create a "territorial partnership." The Catalan site already selected was joined by the Madrid municipality of San Fernando de Henares.

According to the Spanish government, the joint bid is "well positioned" and offers a "good project with business backing."

The Spanish proposal aims to attract one of the four or five AI gigafactories that the European Commission plans to establish across the EU through a combined public and private investment programme worth €20 billion.

The Spanish bid has an estimated budget of around €5 billion. Thirty per cent of funding would come from EU sources or member states, while the remaining 70% would have to be provided by private investors.

The European bloc has so far supported 12 AI factories, including the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, but now wants to take them "to another level" by creating "very large" data and computing infrastructures.