The Government already has the green light from Brussels for the ambitious operation alongside ACS, Telefónica, and Santander to bid 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 venture with the participation of all these groups and the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), known as ‘SEPI Digital’, to participate in the European tender that has just been launched and foresees the creation of these first infrastructures in 2027.
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As detailed by the Community Executive in a statement, after analyzing the notified operation, the entity concluded that “it would not raise competition concerns, 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 issues and complies with the current Community regulations governing mergers.
Merger control
It is viable due to the “limited market positions” of the resulting companies
Brussels has taken into account that the transaction “mainly concerns third-party data center colocation services in Spain” and also that “it contributes to the EU’s technological sovereignty strategy aimed at strengthening and expanding sovereign cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Europe, as part of the EU AI Gigafactories Initiative.”
All this comes after the Council of Ministers approved in June an investment of 718 million euros from the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Administration, through ‘SEPI Digital’, in the public-private consortium that will develop this advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) gigafactory. Pedro Sánchez’s government has expressed confidence in having strong chances for Spain to secure one of the projects that will operate the future AI gigafactories in the EU.
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This call, launched at the end of July, aims for Europe to step up in a strategic matter such as ensuring the security of European data against the current dominance of large US tech companies.
It foresees two types of aid to support up to seven projects, with European funding of up to 500 million euros per facility in one modality and up to 1,000 million in another, distributed between the two development phases. Spain aims to compete in the second group, with a proposal for a shared site between Móra la Nova and San Fernando de Henares (Madrid) and with a project that meets the EU’s highest capacity criteria, those that must exceed 100,000 processors. Other countries that could compete in the same category include Germany, Greece, or Italy.
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