Poznań’s Supercomputing and Networking Centre is set to receive about €50m from the European Commission, topped up by a further
The Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs has announced that Poland is finalising discussions with European Union partners about participating in the European Union’s (EU) AI Gigafactory building programme. After public consultations, it is expected that a formal application will be submitted to EU structures before 20 June 2025.
The participation will leverage Poland’s strategic investment in the PIAST AI Factory at Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PCSS), one of six new AI factories announced by the European Commission (EC) in March. The PCSS will receive €50 million (around 200 million PLN) in funding from the EC to build the Piast AI factory and the Polish government will stump up an additional PLN 340 million (€79.7 million).
Poland attracting AI investment
In April, the Successful Investing in Poland website reported that collaboration between Kulczyk Investments and American technology giant NVIDIA would result in one of the 10 most powerful supercomputers in Europe will be built in Poznań and operate under the GPU-as-a-Service model.
According to the website, this highlights the growing importance of Poland as a tech hub which will attract more IT and AI entities.
This seems to be the case. Also in April, operator Play and its parent group Iliad’s Scaleway cloudco announced plans to create a sovereign cloud for Poland.
Then in May, the Polish data centre operator and cloud company Beyond.pl unveiled a sovereign AI Factory at its 100MW data center campus in Poznan. The company claims to be one of the first in the central eastern European (CEE) market to commercially deploy and provide a platform offering support for the full scope AI development suite including AIaaS, GPU as a Service (GPUaaS), Nvidia AI Enterprise software, data centre, infrastructure and managed services.
EU’s AI Gigafactories
This EU Gigafactories initiative was announced by the EC in September last year with the aim of creating a network of specialised research and development centres across Europe, to position the continent as a leading player in AI and drive innovation throughout the EU.
According to the EC, the Piast AI factory in Poznań will work to accelerate the adoption of AI technologies in academia and industry, particularly in health and life sciences, IT and cybersecurity (including quantum technologies), space and robotics, sustainability (energy, agriculture, and climate change), and the public sector.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs estimates that the proposed Gigafactory, for which Poland is applying, will eventually scale up to 30,000 GPUs, representing an investment of about 5 billion PLN.
