The EU Chips Joint Undertaking opens two funding calls totaling €80 million for AI hardware development projects.

The European Union's Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) has launched two complementary calls for projects to support the development and deployment of AI hardware across the continent. The EU is offering a combined €80 million ($91 million) for initiatives targeting AI compute companies, including chip designers, system developers, AI data centers, public AI and HPC infrastructure operators, and cloud service providers. The deadline for both calls is October 27, 2026.

The calls are operationally linked. The first, focused on "AI chip demonstrators for EU compute infrastructure," carries a €10 million ($11 million) budget and seeks projects to advance European AI chip designs to the demonstrator stage. The Chips JU estimates a contribution of up to €1 million ($1.1 million) per project, though proposals may request different amounts.

Each proposal must include at least one EU-established AI chip design company responsible for the chip design and associated intellectual property. 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.

The second call, "AI compute evaluation and procurement for EU infrastructure," has a budget of €70 million ($79 million) and aims to establish the evaluation infrastructure and services needed to validate technology from the chip demonstrator projects against workloads and benchmarks, while procuring pilot AI compute racks. Proposals should include at least one contracting authority or entity operating an EU AI data center or comparable public AI/HPC facility, and at least two EU-established cloud service providers. The project is expected to run for 42 months.

The EU Chips Act, approved in April 2023 with a budget of €43 billion ($49 billion), was established to double the EU's global semiconductor market share from 10 percent to at least 20 percent by 2030. Originally focused only on high-end chips, the initiative has since expanded to include older chips and research and design facilities.