Steering AI Investment

Tracking how public and private investment shape AI development

As governments increase spending on AI, new questions emerge: does public funding translate into public value? Who benefits from large-scale AI investments and under what conditions?  How do public–private partnerships redistribute risks and rewards between the public sector and tech companies? And how do industry influence and geopolitical competition shape funding priorities?

This line of work explores how investment decisions—not regulation alone—shape the development and direction of artificial intelligence in the EU, while situating these dynamics in a broader global context.

Our work focuses on making AI investment visible and contestable. By analyzing funding flows, procurement choices, and policy frameworks, we aim to strengthen democratic oversight of AI investment and help steer public resources toward outcomes that serve the public interest—including transparency, openness, environmental sustainability, and respect for fundamental rights.

Timeline

Zuzanna Warso has been appointed as Open Future's representative to the AI Act Advisory Forum. The Forum is a permanent expert group established under the AI Act to advise the AI Board and the European Commission on the Act’s implementation. The Commission selected 174 members from more than 700 applications. The Forum’s first meeting is scheduled for 19 June.
The council adopts a legislative act amending the EuroHPC Regulation (2021/1173) to legally permit the Union to invest in AI Gigafactories and quantum pillars. It formalizes the "majority ownership" rule for AI Gigafactory consortia and excludes "high-risk vendors" from the supply chains of these facilities. It creates the legal basis for the EU to own a share of the computing time, which is then redistributed to European startups.
The Commission, the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the European Investment Fund (EIF) sign a MoU to finalize the financial architecture for the Gigafactories. It mandates that the consortia must be European-led to ensure that the infrastructure itself remains a sovereign asset (even if the "engine" - the GPUs - is imported)
Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen presented the sectoral strategy for AI adoption, addressing some specific concerns about "locked-in" partnerships. In her remarks, Virkkunen introduced the "Buy European AI" preference for public procurement. She argued that the EU should prioritize European open-source solutions.
The Commission published The AI Continent Action Plana plan to coordinate the build-out of 13 "AI Factories" (smaller upgrades) and the new "AI Gigafactories" (hyperscale clusters). This document first defined the Gigafactory requirement: clusters of approximately 100,000 state-of-the-art AI chips.
At the AI Summit in Paris, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a €200 billion AI investment target. This figure includes a €50 billion top-up mobilised through the InvestAI initiative, with €20 billion allocated to fund the first four to five AI Gigafactories.

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