Portugal fishing for an AI Gigafactory
Four billion euros is the initial investment needed to build an artificial intelligence (AI) Gigafactory in Sines — that is, if the Portuguese bid gets the green light to host one of Europe’s AI gigafactories, part of the European strategy to counterbalance the weight the United States and China are gaining in AI.
Convinced that the AI race is not lost, the European Commission has launched an ambitious plan to give Europe more computing capacity, one of the main ingredients in training and running the most advanced algorithms. Part of that package is the creation of at least five AI Gigafactories, co-financed by European funds and by private consortia. Between April and June, the Commission sounded out the market to gauge interest in building large AI infrastructure in the region, and Portugal was one of the 76 expressions of interest — “well above expectations” — that reached Brussels. With the expressions of interest in hand, the tender is due to be launched in the fourth quarter.
The Portuguese plan, presented by Banco Português de Fomento (BPF) — a detailed business plan in its own right, seen by ECO, and understood to have been commissioned from McKinsey — envisages a total area of some 28,000 square metres and the purchase of 100,000 Nvidia H100 graphics cards, one of the American company’s most advanced models, used to train advanced AI models. The infrastructure would have a total capacity of 90 MW and would create 274 direct jobs, skilled and unskilled. The big question is: where does the money come from?
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 27 September 2025.