The European Union said it would focus on building artificial-intelligence data and computing infrastructure and making it easier for companies to comply with regulation in a bid to catch up with the U.S. and China in the AI race. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said it wanted to develop a network of so-called AI gigafactories to help companies train the most complex models. Those facilities will be equipped with roughly 100,000 of the latest AI chips, around four times more than the number installed in AI factories being set up currently. The announcement, part of the EU’s AI Continent Action Plan, underscores efforts from the block to position itself as a key player in the AI race against the U.S. and China. The EU has been lagging behind since OpenAI’s 2022 release of ChatGPT ushered in a spending boom. Earlier this year, Washington announced Stargate, an AI joint venture that aims to build data centers in the U.S. for OpenAI. OpenAI, SoftBank Group, Oracle and MGX are the initial equity funders in Stargate, while Arm, Microsoft and Nvidia are technology partners.

Full report : EU to build AI gigafactories in €20 billion push to catch up with US and China.