As the European Union embarks on its most ambitious technological infrastructure project to date, with the €20 billion AI Gigafactory initiative, the AI, Data and Robotics Association (ADRA) is sounding the alarm. In a new open letter, ADRA and the signatories warn that without strict "open-standard" mandates, Europe risks spending billions to build a "closed ecosystem" controlled by foreign tech giants.
The Gigafactory Era Begins
The initiative represents a massive scale-up of the EU’s "AI Factories" concept. Following the entry into force of Council Regulation (EU) 2026/150 on January 20, 2026, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking has been empowered to build hyperscale clusters featuring over 100,000 advanced AI processors each.
These facilities are designed to be the "engine rooms" for the next generation of frontier AI models through the 2040s. However, with the first Calls for Expressions of Interest launching this quarter (Q1 2026), the debate has shifted from how much to spend to how that infrastructure is architected.
The "Invisible" Software Lock-In
In the latest open letter, ADRA argues it is that hardware diversity is an illusion if the software layer remains proprietary. While consortia may use various chips, they are often tethered to a single vendor’s ecosystem through:
- Proprietary Toolchains: Closed software stacks that make it impossible to move workloads to different hardware.
- Networking Monopolies: Technologies like InfiniBand are currently controlled by single vendors, forcing buyers to use vendor-matched equipment across the entire cluster.
- Optimisation Layers: Proprietary "quantisation" and "inference runtimes" that bind users to specific backends.
"When the interoperability baseline is defined by one proprietary platform, that one vendor effectively controls what is interoperable," ADRA states. "This is not a technical limitation. It is an architectural choice."
ADRA’s Roadmap for "Strategic Autonomy"
ADRA is not calling for the exclusion of international suppliers, but rather for a "Resilience" scoring module in the evaluation of bids. Their proposal includes three key demands for the European Commission:
- Mandatory Open Standards: Require support for non-proprietary standards such as ONNX, OpenXLA, and SYCL as the baseline for interoperability.
- Open Networking: Evaluate proposals based on their adoption of open, high-performance fabrics (like those from the Ultra Ethernet Consortium) rather than proprietary networking protocols.
- Supply Chain Diversity: Reward bids that include local European partners and onshore supply chains to mitigate the risk of external shocks.
Preparing for 2028
The association argues that openness is an economic necessity. By using documented, open interfaces, the EU ensures that European chip designers entering the market in 2028 or 2030 can actually integrate their products into these gigafactories.
ADRA points to Finland’s LUMI supercomputer as proof of concept: a world-class facility delivering elite performance using open-source software and alternative hardware under European control.
"The decisions made in Q1 2026 will determine whether this infrastructure serves as a platform for European innovation," the paper concludes, "or as a distribution channel for technologies developed and controlled elsewhere."
Read the open letter in full