Nvidia is participating in a consortium promoted by Banco de Fomento to attract one of the European Union’s five AI gigafactories—equipped with 100,000 advanced chips—to Portugal.
Nvidia is part of the Portuguese consortium competing to bring an artificial intelligence (AI) gigafactory to Portugal. A source familiar with the process confirmed to ECO that the graphics processor giant is involved in the Portuguese bid, days after Banco de Fomento CEO Gonçalo Regalado hinted at the American company’s involvement during an event in Lisbon.
‘I can tell you that we have the will, we have the agreement, and the biggest global players behind the bid—and the 100,000 GPUs [graphics cards] are guaranteed for the factory to be built in Sines,’ said Gonçalo Regalado during a speech at the Fusion conference, organized by Devoteam. The CEO of Banco de Fomento also stated that he had ‘a very strong consortium of national and international private partners.’
When contacted by ECO for comment, an official source at Nvidia declined to respond, and an official source at Banco de Fomento also made no comment. However, the American company’s involvement is crucial for Portugal’s ambition to attract a gigafactory to Sines, as it produces the graphics cards needed for the mega data center on the Alentejo coast, which is expected to employ 270 people. According to ECO, each Nvidia H100 graphics card costs approximately €22,000.
Nvidia’s participation—though the exact model remains unconfirmed—also lends credibility to the Portuguese proposal when the European Commission launches the official tender, expected in the fourth quarter of this year.
The consortium being assembled by Banco de Fomento involves a project potentially worth €4 billion, with part of the funding coming from the EU Executive. Portugal is competing against other Member States to attract one of the five AI gigafactories that Brussels intends to co-finance under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme.
According to Gonçalo Regalado, the Portuguese proposal also enjoys ‘institutional support from the government and civil society.’
In addition to supporting the Portuguese bid, Nvidia is also backing a Spanish proposal, according to various media outlets in the neighboring country, to establish an AI gigafactory in Móra la Nova, Tarragona. This Spanish consortium, comprising major technology and industrial companies, has already been formally submitted to the European Commission under the AI gigafactories program, with Nvidia’s involvement guaranteeing the supply of chips needed to power large-scale AI infrastructure.
At the same event last week, Gonçalo Regalado stated that Portugal is not competing ‘against anyone’ in this race: ‘We are fighting for ourselves.’ However, referring to Spain—seen by some as Portugal’s rival in this European program—he noted: ‘While Spain has four applications that are in direct competition with each other, we made the decision to submit a single unified application and bring everyone on board,’ he emphasized.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Nvidia is also involved in another project with Deutsche Telekom and the Brookfield fund to develop an ‘Industrial AI Cloud’—a large-scale initiative aiming to build AI capabilities using around 100,000 graphics cards. Although still in the planning phase and not yet officially confirmed as a formal application to the European program, it represents a significant strategic investment by Nvidia in AI infrastructure across Europe.
The five AI gigafactories the European Commission plans to establish in the coming years could represent a total investment of approximately €20 billion, according to the institution. This amount is part of the InvestAI program, announced in February by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The broader InvestAI initiative aims to mobilize €200 billion in AI investment over the coming years, of which only €50 billion will come from European Union funds.
As for Nvidia—currently the largest company in the S&P 500 by market capitalization, valued at $4.46 trillion—it continues to invest aggressively. On Monday, it was reported that the company plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, and last week it also signed an agreement to acquire a stake in Intel.