Portugal and Spain have jointly submitted a bid to the European Commission to build one of four European AI Gigafactories — massive computing hubs designed to underpin the European Union’s artificial intelligence ambitions. The Portuguese portion of the project is valued at €6 billion, with Sines identified as the proposed location.

The choice of Sines is hardly surprising. The city is already home to the Start Campus project, one of Europe’s largest data centres. It is also a landing point for transatlantic submarine cables, while the cool waters of the Atlantic provide efficient natural cooling for servers. Nearby solar and wind power resources further strengthen its appeal. We recently reported that Microsoft is investing $10 billion in a new AI campus in Sines for many of the same reasons.

If approved, the facility will house 100,000 of Nvidia’s latest graphics processing units (GPUs), providing enough computing power to train the next generation of large language models, including systems such as GPT. The infrastructure will also be supported by additional sites in Lisbon and Abrantes to improve the network’s resilience.

Germany, France, Finland and Romania are also competing to host one of the AI Gigafactories. The European Commission is expected to announce its decision later this year.

Should Portugal secure the project, Sines will cement its position as one of Europe’s leading technology hubs — a remarkable transformation for a city that, until recently, was known primarily for its oil port.