Mario Draghi calls for Europe to build AI data centers

Investing.com -- Former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi wrote Friday that Europe must build more artificial intelligence data centers to maintain economic sovereignty and boost productivity growth.

Draghi said the euro area-U.S. productivity gap widened from $9 per hour in 2018 to $21 in 2025. Fast adoption of AI could add 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points annually to total factor productivity growth, which has been roughly zero since 2022, according to ECB scenarios.

The European Union hosts under 5% of the world's AI compute capacity compared with 75% for the U.S., Draghi wrote in the Financial Times. The gap between demand and installed supply in Europe stands at around 3GW, roughly a quarter of current capacity, and is expected to widen to 14GW by 2030.

"Being cut off from AI, once the economy runs on it, would be more like being cut off from the US financial system. The effects would be catastrophic," Draghi said.

Draghi, who served as Italy's prime minister, said Europe controls little of the AI value chain but can maintain sovereignty over data. The European Commission estimates put Europe's data economy at over €800 billion, or more than 5% of GDP, by 2030.

A data center takes 24 months to build in the U.S. but 42 months in Germany due to longer delays for permits and grid connections. An AI data center in Sweden costs only about a tenth more than one in China, Draghi noted.

Draghi proposed that European companies pool their commitments into contracts large enough to finance new data centers. He cited a group of European companies, including ASML, Capgemini and Amadeus, which have committed to multiyear purchases of Mistral's European Compute Units intended to support 1GW of capacity by 2030.

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