Black Sea AI Gigafactory: Strengthen Romania’s Role in the Emerging European AI Ecosystem

The Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance, with the technical support of the Romanian Digitalization Authority (ADR), announced the launch of an Expression of Interest (EOI) for the identification and pre-selection of a Consortium Leader for the development, structuring, and implementation of the Black Sea AI Gigafactory project in Romania.

The Project is envisaged as a strategic AI compute infrastructure initiative of national and regional relevance, intended to support the development of advanced digital and industrial capabilities, strengthen Romania’s role in the emerging European AI ecosystem, and position the Black Sea region as an important location for next-generation AI infrastructure.

Through this EOI, the Coordinating Authority seeks to identify interested and qualified entities with the experience, financial standing, and strategic capability to lead the preparation of the Project, assemble and coordinate an appropriate consortium, and support the advancement of a credible, scalable, and implementable investment concept in compliance with applicable Romanian and European Union law.

At this stage, the EOI is intended as an initial market engagement and pre-selection process. It is designed to identify a Consortium Leader with demonstrated capability and credibility for a project of this nature and scale. Accordingly, the Coordinating Authority does not require at this stage a final technical design, final consortium composition, final investment structure, or binding financing commitments.

Interested parties are invited to submit an indicative development concept covering, at minimum, an initial deployment phase of approximately 20,000 GPUs or equivalent AI accelerators, together with an indicative approach to demand, utilization, scalability, and project delivery.