The EU has revealed details of a €20bn (£17bn) plan to create new sites equipped with vast supercomputers in Europe to develop the next generation of artificial intelligence models, while opening the door to amending its landmark law that regulates the technology.

Publishing a strategy to turn Europe into an “AI continent”, the European Commission vice-president Henna Virkkunen said the technology was at the heart of making Europe more competitive, secure and technologically sovereign, adding: “The global race for AI is far from over.”

The EU is attempting to catch up with the US and China, which have taken a lead in pioneering the technology that increasingly powers shopping websites and self-driving cars, generates text, and is predicted to play a transformative role in healthcare, security, defence and advanced manufacturing, among other sectors.

The US has a commanding lead in AI, far ahead of China. A report from Stanford University this week said 40 “notable AI models” – meaning influential – were produced by institutions in the US in 2024, compared with 15 in China and three in Europe (all French).

In a separate 2024 report, Stanford found that no EU country made the top five for “vibrancy” in AI, a metric that considered private investment, patents and research. It ranked the UK in third place behind the US and China, with France in sixth place and Germany eighth.

The EU has already embarked on a plan to build 13 AI factories – sites with supercomputers and datacentres, where researchers develop and test AI models.

The new AI “gigafactories” would be much larger, targeting what the commission called “moonshots”: significant innovations in healthcare, biotech, industry, robotics and scientific discovery.

EU to build AI gigafactories in €20bn push to catch up with US and China