The government and PPC are trying to familiarize the market with the proposal to create in Western Macedonia one of the 5 Artificial Intelligence (AI) gigafactories planned in Europe, within the framework of a relevant initiative by the European Commission.
The PPC proposal was presented at an event organized by the Deputy Prime Minister, Kostis Hatzidakis, and attended by the Minister of Digital Governance and Artificial Intelligence, Dimitris Papastergiou, other members of the government and representatives from the shipping, pharmaceutical, tourism, banking and infrastructure markets.
The aim of the event, among other things, was to mobilize the market in order to assess its needs in AI infrastructure.
EU plan
PPC has submitted a proposal to the EU for the construction of a giant data center, designed and optimized specifically for the needs of Artificial Intelligence.
This is an investment of around 3-5 billion euros (each of giant AI factories) with the EU having announced that a total of 20 billion euros will be mobilised for them, part of the 200 billion euro amount that will be invested in AI, in order for Europe to acquire its own critical infrastructure.
The EU has lagged behind the USA and China, countries in which their technological giants (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei) have already invested in these infrastructures.
The largest part of the funds that will be allocated for the gigafactories will come from the private sector (at least 65%). In addition, the EU has announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) for the development of AI gigafactories.
A total of 76 entities from 16 countries have submitted expressions of interest for the creation of gigafactories, which means that the competition is strong. Interested parties include large European companies from the data center, telecommunications, energy markets, as well as investors. The process is in its initial stage. The submission of binding proposals is scheduled for the end of 2025.
Regardless of the fate of the proposal to the EU, PPC plans to proceed with the creation of data centers in Western Macedonia in the former lignite areas and for this purpose is also looking for partners from technology giants that operate large cloud and data center infrastructures, capable of massively scaling, depending on demand.
