Much has changed in the last 16 months. On 9 December 2023, the European Parliament and Council reached a provisional agreement on the AI Act, the world’s first-ever legal framework on Artificial Intelligence. On 9 April 2025, the European Commission (EC) published its AI Continent Action Plan, laying out plans to boost public and private investments into developing world-leading AI and setting up AI infrastructure. As Europe shifts to position itself to become a global leader in AI development, it is time to take a look at the Commission’s plans and which ones are relevant to research and education networks.
It is also time to say Happy Birthday to the Special Interest Group (SIG) on AI, celebrating its first anniversary at TNC25!
The European Union’s AI Continent Action Plan is an ambitious 25-pager steering the EU toward global AI leadership through five strategic pillars. With this plan, the EC responded to the global AI boom which sees other global actors investing heavily in this area – both publicly and privately. Of the five strategic pillars, this article will take a closer look at three – (1) building AI computing infrastructure, (2) increasing access to high-quality data, and (5) simplifying the implementation of the AI Act.
Engines of AI innovation
At the core of the first strategic pillar is a fund of €20 billion for AI Gigafactories, large-scale facilities with approximately “100,000 state-of-the-art AI chips” (referencing NVIDIA’s H100 GPU). They are built on the concept of the AI Factories, a first step to making AI-optimised computing resources available to small and medium-sized enterprises and researchers. The Gigafactories bring this idea to the next level – these will be massive infrastructure facilities to train and develop complex AI models at an unprecedented scale, and are to be open to researchers, start-ups, and industry across Member States. 13 AI Factories had been selected by May 2025, and a call for expression of interest in becoming an AI Gigafactory opened on 9 April 2025.
Besides improved AI data and computing infrastructure, the plan also outlines how to increase the access to large volumes of high-quality data. Attached to the AI Factories will be Data Labs, federating data from different AI Factories covering the same sectors and linking to the existing Common European Data Spaces. Like the AI Factories, the expanded Data Labs will build on the EuroHPC network. The EU has worked on creating an internal market for data since 2014 – in 2025 we can expect the launch of a new and comprehensive Data Union Strategy to support European AI solutions.
All roads lead to…
As Europe’s trusted provider of such networks for research and education, GÉANT strongly supports these initiatives. We welcome the EC’s recognition of the challenges Europe faces in becoming an AI continent. GÉANT also acknowledges the need for Europe’s computing infrastructure to be scaled up even further to enhance its capabilities to train and develop AI.
The network of cutting-edge supercomputers deployed by EuroHPC, the AI Factories, and the Gigafactories all rely on the development of downstream support – they are dependent on not just computing power, but on the backbone networks connecting the sites. At GÉANT, we know that high-speed connectivity and high-capacity data transfer through secure and scalable networks are crucial to innovate and accelerate European AI.
Despite outlining the need for sustained investment into infrastructure, the Action Plan does not sufficiently acknowledge the network aspect. Therefore, we recommend including the network infrastructure underpinning the AI Factories, Gigafactories and Data Labs in AI funding roadmaps.
Money talks
On the topic of funding – who will pay for these massive infrastructure investments? In February 2025, Commission President von der Leyen set out her vision at the AI Action Summit in Paris when she announced InvestAI, an initiative to mobilise €200 billion for investment in AI in line with the political priorities of the Competitiveness Compass. Included in this number is the €20 billion for the AI Gigafactories. However, these numbers seem to be re-prioritizations from the Digital Europe Programme, Horizon Europe, and InvestEU, rather than new commitments. To make the plans for a highly innovative and capable AI infrastructure a reality, what will be needed is the commitment of new resources made available through inclusive, long-term planning.
What about the AI Gigafactories?
For the AI Gigafactories, the majority of the costs will be covered by private partners. The CAPEX investments will be covered up to a maximum cap of 35% by public authorities (EU and Member States), even though the exact level of support will be determined on a case-by-case basis. The remaining CAPEX investment should be covered by private partners (industry and public and/or private investment funds). The operational expenditure (OPEX) of an AI Gigafactory will be the sole responsibility of the private partners. Importantly, the financial participation of the public authorities should reflect the share of access time reserved for public applications.
Simplify, simplify, simplify
The fifth pillar of the AI Continent Action Plan covers the simplification of the AI Act implementation. We currently find ourselves in the preparatory phase – the first prohibitions for prohibited AI systems started to apply in February 2025. These are systems which were found to pose an unacceptable risk to society – AI systems that pose a clear threat to safety or rights (as for example: social scoring by governments and real-time biometric identification in public).
For the remaining categories in the AI Act’s risk-based categorization, the EU recognized the need to help organisations and businesses with tailor-made support. As a first step, the Commission will launch the AI Act Service Desk, which will be part of the EU’s AI Office. Additionally, a public consultation currently identifies stakeholders’ regulatory challenges, the result of which might lead to a simplification of the AI Act.
For the NREN community, the AI Act also brings opportunities. For one, GÉANT and its membership are well positioned to host cross-border AI sandboxes under AI Act Article 53. These sandboxes “shall provide for a controlled environment that fosters innovation and facilitates the development, training, testing and validation of innovative AI systems for a limited time before their being placed on the market or put into service” (AI Act Article 57).
Conclusion
The EU’s AI Continent Action Plan sets out a strategy for Europe to keep pace with global AI innovation in an ethical and secure manner. The large-scale infrastructure built on top of the EuroHPC Networks – AI Factories, Gigafactories, and Data Labs – all rely on a secure backbone network and a trusted single point of access. GÉANT is uniquely positioned not only as a provider of secure, high-capacity connectivity and access management but also as a strategic enabler within the research and education community. As the plans for European AI progress, we look forward to contributing in more granular detail to the implementation of the AI Continent Action Plan.
Read the full online magazine here
