There is a concept that should be familiar with: technological sovereignty. The United States is looking for her in terms of semiconductors so as not to depend on Taiwan. China wants her with the same goal and with the intention of strengthen your industry. And Europe is also pursuing it. Within this search is the idea of strengthening European sovereignty in artificial intelligence by building AI gigafactories.
And Spain and Portugal are clear about one thing: they want to be that node of European AI.
InvestAI. Within this search for independence, the truth is that Europe has a long way to go. On the world stage, they depend on the Dutch ASML to create cutting-edge chipsbut Taiwan and China are the world’s factory and the United States has been a key partner both in software as in space matter. Seeing the recent course of the United StatesEurope has realized that it cannot depend so much on foreign alliances and that its key systems are not European, and it is going to dig deep into its pockets.
200 billion euros is what the European Commission’s InvestAI initiative has to invest in programs focused on the development of artificial intelligence. Within it, there are another 20,000 million saved to build gigafactories.
GigafactorIA. Its name is quite revealing and it is about huge data centers with capacity for hundreds of thousands of chips with the objective of both training and inferring artificial intelligence models. The plan was launched a few months ago with the reconversion of seven European data centers in data centers for AI and with one objective: that European companies stop turning to foreign ones. For example, the French Mistral signed with Microsoft to be able to use its systems to train Le Chat. The idea is that this be done ‘at home’.
It is estimated that one of these gigafactories may have more than 100,000 state-of-the-art AI processors and they are expected to be optimized to have low consumption, reuse of resources such as water and be a strategic node close to other companies, universities and serve to attract talent.
Strategy. Spain has been for a few months tempting American companies to build their data centers in the national territory. Aragon has become one of those strategic pointsbut also Madrid either Tarragona. Now, there are other municipalities that oppose it (something that not only happens in Spain).
Within this strategy of European technological sovereignty, Spain has two aces up your sleeve: Mora la Nova in Tarragona and San Fernando de Henares in Madrid. They are the two municipalities that could host one of these AI gigafactories and that would take advantage of the technological and energy infrastructure in the area to accelerate the projects. The information is not new, but now Portugal joins in.
As detail From Moncloa, both countries are going to carry out a series of bilateral efforts to be at the energy and technological head of Europe, doing emphasis on the coordination of artificial intelligence projects. Because Spain wants the European gigafactory and Portugal too. The neighboring country is already developing a data center in Sines, and the two countries are playing their cards.
Energy. Portugal plays the card that Sines has a good connection with the Atlantic submarine cables. Spain also has a powerful argument: if Europe wants AI gigafactories to be energy efficient, the country has a renewable infrastructure that can help make AI independent of gas or coal.
Through the agreement between the two, the intention to collaborate to take advantage of the complementary capabilities and synergies between both countries is put on the table.
Problem. There are several. On the one hand, the energy ones. Although Spain is one of the Europe’s powers in terms of renewable energyartificial intelligence demands a lot, a lot of energy at peak times. So much so that not only Big Tech have private projects to open nuclear power plantsbut it has been shown that it is necessary turn to coal to meet demand. Because AI needs sustained energy, but above all fast and immediately accessible in the most stressful moments. And there renewables only comply if there are huge batteries involved.
On the other hand, Europe is now building its infrastructure… and it is the worst time. If you want gigafactories to have the latest generation chips, it means buying NVIDIA’s H200s. The problem is that these chips, which are currently leading the way, will be surpassed in the short term by a new generation. NVIDIA is already working at full capacity on Vera Rubinand it is not a more powerful chip, but a paradigm shift.
This game of being at the cutting edge of AI is slow because the infrastructure has to be built. But, above all, it is expensive. In any case, the results on which countries will host the gigafactories are expected to be published this spring, and we will see if the Spain-Portugal candidacy convinces the Commission.
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