Brussels authorizes the alliance of ACS, Telefónica, Santander and the Government for the AI gigafactory

The Government already has the approval of Brussels for the ambitious operation with ACS, Telefónica and Santander to qualify for the future European Artificial Intelligence (AI) gigafactory that Brussels plans to build in a Member State very soon. The European Commission has authorized the creation of a joint company with the participation of all these groups and the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), known as the 'SEPI Digital', to participate in the European competition that has just been launched and that foresees the creation of these first infrastructures in 2027.

As detailed by the Community Executive in a statement, after analyzing the notified operation, the entity has concluded that "it would not raise competition problems, given the limited market positions of the companies resulting from the proposed operation." The operation has been examined under the simplified merger control procedure. Therefore, the joint venture does not raise competition problems and does comply with current Community regulations that regulate mergers.

Brussels has taken into account that the transaction “refers mainly to co-location services for third-party data centers in Spain” and also that “it contributes to the EU's technological sovereignty strategy of strengthening and expanding sovereign cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Europe, as part of the EU's AI Gigafactories Initiative.”

Everything comes after in June the Council of Ministers endorsed investing 718 million euros from the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, through the 'SEPI Digital', in the public-private consortium that will develop this advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) gigafactory. Pedro Sánchez's Executive has been convinced that it has great options for Spain to achieve one of the projects that will operate the future AI gigafactories in the EU.

This call, launched at the end of July, aims for Europe to get its act together on a strategic issue such as guaranteeing the security of European data in the face of the current dominance of large American technology companies.

It provides for two types of aid to support up to seven projects, with European financing of up to 500 million euros per installation in a first type and up to 1,000 million in another, distributed between the two development phases. Where Spain wants to compete is in the second group, with a proposal for a shared headquarters between Móra la Nova and San Fernando de Henares (Madrid) and with a project that meets the criteria of those with the greatest capacity set by the EU, which must exceed 100,000 processors. Other countries that could compete in the same category are Germany, Greece or Italy.