By Foo Yun Chee
PARIS (Reuters) -The European Union will provide 50 billion euros ($51.6 billion) of EU funds to bolster the bloc’s artificial intelligence ambitions, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, as countries race to lead in the technology.
The EU funds will top up the European AI Champions initiative, spearheaded by venture capitalist General Catalyst, which has drawn pledges of 150 billion euros of private investment so far, from the likes of Airbus, ASML, Siemens, Infineon, Philips, Mistral and Volkswagen.
“Thereby we aim to mobilise a total of 200 billion euros for AI investments in Europe,” von der Leyen told the Paris AI Summit.
The EU funding is significantly less, however, than the up to $500 billion of U.S. private sector investment announced by President Donald Trump last month for AI infrastructure.
Von der Leyen said EU investments will focus on industrial and mission-critical technologies.
The EU executive said 20 billion of the 50 billion euros EU funding will finance the construction of four AI gigafactories across the 27-country bloc, adding to seven such factories announced last December.
($1 = 0.9690 euros)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Richard Lough and Susan Fenton)
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