en.Wedoany.com Reported - Borja Ochoa, President of Telefónica Spain, stated on May 14 that the Spanish AI Gigafactory consortium, led by Telefónica and ACS, is intensively preparing its final bid, with plans to formally submit it between June and July. The project outcome is expected to be announced before year-end. The consortium is participating in the AI Gigafactory selection process led by the EU's EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, vying to secure deployment qualification for one of Europe's first AI Gigafactories for Spain.
Juan Azcue, Telefónica's Chief Financial and Corporate Development Officer, disclosed the company's equity positioning in the project during an analyst meeting following the quarterly results announcement. Azcue clearly stated that Telefónica plans to hold a minority stake of 10% to 15% in the consortium, with investments to remain prudent and within parameters the group considers to offer value returns. Emilio Gayo, CEO of Telefónica, further emphasized that any investment by the company in this project will remain limited and strictly based on the criterion of generating value for the group. According to Telefónica's disclosure, the gigafactory's financing framework is approximately two-thirds reliant on debt financing, with the remainder covered by own funds.
The consortium's composition reflects deep integration of public-private cooperation. The Spanish government has committed to injecting €250 million into the consortium, and the state-owned investment company, Sociedad Española para la Transformación Tecnológica, has entered the project's capital structure. Besides Telefónica and ACS, consortium members include quantum computing software company Multiverse Computing, liquid cooling infrastructure provider Submer, among other enterprises. Energy company Solaria Energía previously considered participating in the consortium through an equity stake in April, further broadening the industrial coverage. The total public-private investment scale for the project is expected to exceed €4 billion, with some sources citing a range between €4 billion and €5 billion.
The gigafactory's scale roadmap has been preliminarily defined. The project will be advanced in multiple phases, with an initial deployment of approximately 150 MW of IT power capacity, subsequently scaling up towards a 1 GW target to match the continuously rising demand for large-scale AI training and inference computing power. The Spanish government has listed two locations as candidate sites: Móra la Nova in the province of Tarragona, Catalonia, as the primary site, and San Fernando de Henares in the Community of Madrid as the secondary site. If Portugal ultimately participates in the co-construction, the two countries will coordinate their respective projects to form a joint Iberian proposal.
Spain's bid for an AI Gigafactory has been elevated to a national strategic priority. The governments of Spain and Portugal reached a consensus on March 6 to explore the feasibility of jointly applying for one of the factories. Óscar López, Spain's Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, publicly expressed confidence in Spain's selection during this year's Mobile World Congress, emphasizing that the country submitted its candidacy application in June 2025. Previously, Telefónica and FSAS Technologies had jointly won the EuroHPC JU contract for the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer upgrade, valued at €129 million, expected to be fully operational by mid-2026. This project is seen as preliminary validation of Telefónica's capability to deliver AI infrastructure.
The Spanish consortium's competitors are multiple similar applications submitted by EU member states. The European Commission formally approved the construction of the AI Gigafactory network in January 2026, with an initial plan to select five factories. This initiative is a core component of the EU's €200 billion AI investment plan, aiming to triple Europe's AI computing power within the next 5 to 7 years. At least 19 EU member states have submitted application proposals, making the competitive landscape exceptionally intense. The EU's goal is to drive the selected factories to become operational between 2027 and 2028, meeting the rigid demand of a 50% increase in AI adoption rates in key industries under the 2030 digital transformation targets.
The Móra la Nova site possesses significant advantages. Located in the Ribera d'Ebre region of Catalonia, covering an area of approximately 4 hectares, it has passed assessments on key infrastructure indicators such as power access, water supply, and fiber optic connectivity. The site is adjacent to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, a leading European computing node already operating the MareNostrum 5 supercomputing system. If the two facilities form a tiered computing matrix ranging from high-performance computing to large-scale AI inference, Spain's weight in the Southern European AI infrastructure landscape will undergo a substantial leap.
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