AI Factories and Deployment Centres

Only 14% of EU companies use AI, and the vast majority of them are IT firms. In contrast, adoption remains alarmingly low in core industrial sectors: just over 10% of manufacturers and utilities are using AI (1).

To close this gap, Europe needs a network of AI factories focused on real-world deployment rather than basic research. These should be co-designed with industry and ready to integrate quantum capabilities as they mature. The centres must be supported by dedicated EU funding, simplified permitting, targeted tax incentives, coordinated public procurement, and large-scale public-private partnerships. By enabling large-scale, low-latency AI inferencing, where machines interpret data and act in real time, the centre would support critical use cases like predictive maintenance in factories, personalised medicine and treatments, dynamic energy management in grids, or fault detection in industrial systems.

The impact? Lower downtime, higher productivity, and faster innovation.

(1): Eurostat, Use of Artificial Intelligence in Enterprises, 2025

Project scope: 

• Establish cross-border  AI factories and deployment centres featuring regulatory sandboxes and innovation hubs, co-designed with industry to support real-time, high-volume AI inferencing. 

• Support deployment of AI applications in key industrial sectors, e.g. manufacturing, energy, healthcare, mobility, logistics, through testbeds, shared compute access, and applied R&D. 

• Facilitate secure access to public sector datasets to train and scale sector-specific AI models. 

KPIs by 2030: 

• Number of operational AI/quantum infrastructure centres supporting industrial use cases across EU regions. 

• Number of AI-powered applications deployed in manufacturing, healthcare, energy, mobility and logistics as a result of AI factory’s activity. 

• Volume of public sector data processed securely through federated AI models. 

ROIs by 2030: 

• Reduction in downtime, energy waste, or production inefficiencies via AI-powered predictive systems. 

• Billion EUR in added value from AI healthcare innovations unlocked by these computing hubs 

• Share of private-sector compute usage and investment mobilised through public infrastructure (e.g. € leveraged per €1 public funding).