EU Chips Joint Undertaking puts out two calls for AI hardware development projects

Calls have a combined budget of €80 million

The European Union’s Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) has put out two calls for complementary projects that will support the development and deployment of AI hardware across the continent.

The EU is offering a combined budget of €80 million ($91m) for the projects, which are targeted at AI compute organizations. This includes AI chip design companies, system developers, AI data centers, public AI/HPC infrastructure operators, and cloud service providers.

In a statement, the Chips JU said the calls are “operationally linked,” with one focused on ‘AI chip demonstrators for EU compute infrastructure,’ and the other targeting ‘AI compute evaluation and procurement for EU infrastructure.’

The deadline for both calls is October 27, 2026.

The AI chip demonstrators call is seeking projects to bring advanced European AI chip designs to the demonstrator stage. This call has a budget of €10m ($11m), with the Chips JU estimating that the EU will contribute up to €1m ($1.1m) per project, although proposals may request a different amount.

Each proposal must include at least one EU-established AI chip design company responsible for the AI chip design and associated IP, and applicants must demonstrate that the AI chip has been taped out at a commercial foundry, with engineering samples available or expected within the specified timeframe.

Meanwhile, the compute evaluation and procurement has a budget of €70m ($79m), and aims to establish the common evaluation infrastructure and services needed to validate technology from the chip demonstrator projects against workloads and benchmarks, in addition to procuring pilot AI compute racks.

Proposals should include at least one contracting authority or entity operating an EU AI data center, or comparable EU public AI/HPC facility, and at least two EU-established Cloud Service Providers. The project is expected to run for 42 months.

Approved in April 2023, the €43 billion ($49bn) EU Chips Act was established with the intention of doubling the EU’s global market share in semiconductors from 10 percent to at least 20 percent by 2030. Originally set to focus only on high-end chips, it has since expanded to include older chips and research and design facilities.

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