The amendment also adds a dedicated quantum-technologies pillar to the EuroHPC framework. The Commission's InvestAI initiative earmarks €20 billion for up to five gigafactories, with the official call expected from the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking later in 2026; an informal expression-of-interest exercise already drew 77 proposals from 16 Member States. Why this matters for a manufacturer: training or running an AI model - for example, to spot defects on a production line or predict when a machine will fail - takes far more computing power than most companies, especially SMEs, can afford to own themselves. Gigafactories will extend the EuroHPC network's existing AI Factories, which already let industrial users rent that computing capacity instead: a 'Playground' tier gives SMEs and start-ups quick, low-commitment access to test an idea within two working days, a 'Fast Lane' tier suits medium-sized projects needing up to 50,000 GPU hours, and a 'Large Scale' tier serves bigger, longer research and deployment efforts. In short, gigafactories are meant to make the kind of computing power previously only available to large technology firms accessible to European manufacturers developing their own AI applications.

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