New AI gigafactories are being developed across the European Union as large-scale computing centres designed to build and train advanced artificial intelligence models. According to Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, two such facilities are to operate in Poland, one in Poznań and another in Kraków. Experts argue that these projects will be important for building Europe’s digital sovereignty. The problem, however, is that progress remains too slow, while access to critical infrastructure components such as chips, memory and servers is still heavily dependent on supply chains outside the EU.
“In the case of AI gigafactories, the key question is why we still do not have them. This is something Europe and Poland should have started thinking about much earlier. I am very glad that this issue has returned and that we are moving away from fascination with models and software alone and focusing on something fundamental, namely infrastructure,” Grzegorz Soczewka, VP Sales C&EE at OVHcloud, told Newseria.
AI gigafactories are large-scale facilities intended for developing and training next-generation AI models with trillions of parameters. They require enormous computing power as well as stable and efficient energy supplies. This means they depend on specialised processors, reliable supply chains, advanced networking, strong energy efficiency and AI-driven automation.
“If we do not invest in AI gigafactories, we will not be able to build our own digital sovereignty. We will be doing it on rented digital foundations,” Soczewka argues. “We are still at a relatively early stage of building AI gigafactories. From our point of view, this process should accelerate significantly. Still, I am pleased that the conversation is happening, that the first consortia have emerged, locations have been selected and work is moving forward, with strong support from the European Union.”
The European Commission launched the AI Factories initiative in 2024, with the longer-term objective of scaling it up into gigafactories. One Polish project is being developed by the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center. In March 2025, the Ministry of Digital Affairs announced that the centre had secured PLN 200 million in EU funding to establish an AI Factory in Poland. Later, Poland also announced its participation in the EU’s AI gigafactories programme, with the planned Polish application expected to cover around 30,000 GPUs and a total investment of roughly PLN 5 billion.
The Poznań-based facility is expected to focus on areas such as medical diagnostics and bioinformatics, space exploration, automation and sustainability, including efforts to counter extreme weather events. In October 2025, Poland’s second AI Factory was announced. The project, called Gaia AI Factory, will be built by a consortium led by the Academic Computer Centre Cyfronet AGH in Kraków. The facility is to focus on three strategic areas: healthcare, the space sector and large language models.
“The risk is not a lack of innovation. The risk is a monopoly over the resources that may restrict it. The discussion about AI gigafactories is not only about technology. It is about whether Europe will be able to build a new digital economy instead of standing in line for leftover computing power from global monopolists,” the OVHcloud executive stressed during the 18th TIME Economic Forum.
As he notes, demand for computing power is rising rapidly from month to month.
“The challenge is not generating demand for that power. The challenge is that very soon we may no longer be able to provide it to users or companies. We face infrastructure constraints and an oligopoly in infrastructure,” Grzegorz Soczewka said.
Data from Epoch AI indicate that the United States dominates the global AI supercomputing landscape, accounting for about three-quarters of worldwide GPU cluster performance. China ranks second with around 15 percent. Europe’s position is much smaller by comparison, which helps explain why digital sovereignty has become such an urgent issue in the EU debate.
“Sixty-five percent of the world’s GPUs, the processors needed for AI, are controlled by Nvidia. That makes it a monopolist. How can we build our own shield in such a situation? A single political decision or supply chain disruption could eliminate the innovative capacity of companies, countries or even Europe as a whole,” Soczewka argues.
A similar challenge exists in access to the infrastructure needed to build cloud services. At the same time, demand for cloud solutions continues to grow. According to Statistics Poland, 55.3 percent of enterprises in Poland used paid cloud computing services in 2025. The share was highest among companies employing more than 250 people. This suggests that the expansion of AI infrastructure is unfolding in parallel with broader growth in demand for computing and storage capacity across the economy.
“We are seeing enormous growth in demand for cloud services, whether public, private or specialist, such as SecNumCloud, which is intended for particularly sensitive sectors of business and the economy. From our perspective, cloud is growing much faster than other elements of our portfolio,” Soczewka explains. “But when it comes to the availability of the infrastructure behind that cloud, the supply chain is unfortunately heavily disrupted. Europe has no real influence over chip prices, and this means cloud services are often the answer to exactly what the market lacks: servers, chips, chipsets and memory. Thanks to the cloud, companies can still buy data storage capacity or computing power.”
As he underlines, the market structure itself, with only a limited number of infrastructure producers, is feeding price increases.
“We have an oligopoly in the market, and in some areas even a monopoly, so companies themselves decide what they want to produce and in what quantities. In the current environment, memory and chip manufacturers have shifted toward products with higher margins, which has made the components most urgently needed less available,” the OVHcloud representative says. “We manage a large part of our own supply chain. It is a vertically integrated supply chain, but even for us, as an organisation that is relatively well prepared and protected, the impact is clear. It also affects the final prices we offer in the market.”
The outbreak of war in the Middle East is another risk factor in this context. According to the expert, further escalation could reduce component availability even more and push prices higher. On the other hand, it could also encourage Europe to accelerate its digital transformation.
“If Europe reacts quickly and starts taking care of technology and supply chains, we are capable of building a certain degree of technological sovereignty. We have the potential for it. There are already companies in Europe that are highly advanced in these technologies. It only requires a bit of work,” Soczewka says.
