The EU Chips Joint Undertaking has launched two calls for project proposals aimed at AI hardware development, opening a fresh funding channel for European semiconductor and accelerator development under the bloc's Chips Act framework.

The calls invite companies and research organizations across the EU to submit proposals for projects that advance AI-related hardware. The EU Chips Joint Undertaking, the body created to implement the European Chips Act's research and innovation agenda, manages funding pooled from the EU budget, member states and participating industry partners.

The announcement, reported by Data Center Dynamics, confirms the scope of the two calls as AI hardware development. The Joint Undertaking has not disclosed the total budget attached to each call or the deadlines for submission in the material published so far, meaning prospective applicants will need to consult the official call documents for those figures.

For European semiconductor and data center stakeholders, the calls represent the latest step in Brussels' effort to build domestic capability in compute hardware at a time when AI accelerator supply remains concentrated among a small number of non-EU vendors. The Chips Joint Undertaking channels grants toward design, pilot lines and capacity-building projects, and AI hardware has moved up its priority list as demand for training and inference compute has surged.

Details on eligibility, funding rates and evaluation criteria appear in the call texts published by the Joint Undertaking. Interested consortia — typically comprising chip designers, research institutes and system integrators — will compete for grants that cover a share of eligible project costs.

Applicants should expect the standard EU funding cycle: proposal submission, independent evaluation, and negotiation of grant agreements with the Joint Undertaking before work packages begin. The two AI hardware calls add to the portfolio of Open Experimentation, pilot line and design-platform actions the body already operates.

With these calls now open, the pace of European AI silicon development will depend heavily on how quickly strong consortia form and how the awarded projects translate funded R&D into deployable hardware.