Portugal just bid €6 billion to build an EU AI supercomputer at Sines. Nvidia is backing it.

Portugal and Spain just bid for an EU AI Gigafactory at Sines. The Portuguese stake is €6 billion. Nvidia is backing it with 100,000 GPUs. It's Sunday, 28 June. Twenty-seven degrees. Here's what you need to know.

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PORTUGAL AND SPAIN ARE BIDDING TO BUILD AN EU AI GIGAFACTORY AT SINES. THE PORTUGUESE STAKE IS €6 BILLION.

Portugal and Spain have submitted a joint bid to the European Commission to build one of four planned EU AI Gigafactories. The total Iberian bid is €12 billion, split evenly between the two countries. The Portuguese component is centred on Sines, with €6 billion in public and private funding, and is being led by Banco Português de Fomento (BPF), the national promotional bank.

If selected, the facility would house 100,000 advanced GPUs guaranteed by Nvidia. That is enough computing power to train the next generation of large language models and position Portugal as a sovereign AI infrastructure hub. Additional facilities are planned for Lisbon and Abrantes to provide geographic redundancy and support the wider ecosystem.

BPF chief executive Gonçalo Regalado confirmed at the Fusion conference in Lisbon that the bid has secured backing from leading global players. "We have the will, we have the agreement, and we have the biggest global players behind the bid," he said. "The 100,000 GPUs are guaranteed for the factory to be built in Sines."

Regalado stressed that the Portuguese facility would maintain full sovereignty: "managed by Portuguese people, with leadership in Portugal, management in Portugal, sovereignty in Portugal, and a Portuguese security and cybersecurity dimension." The joint bid with Spain was structured on a parity basis with independent management and governance.

Sines is not an accidental choice. The town already hosts Microsoft's $10 billion AI campus (announced earlier this month), the Start Campus 1.2GW renewable-powered data centre, and the European landing points for transatlantic fibre-optic cables including EllaLink and 2Africa. Cold Atlantic water provides natural cooling. Portuguese solar and offshore wind provide the energy. The geography that made Sines a petroleum port in the 1970s now makes it a natural home for AI infrastructure.

The EU's InvestAI strategy aims to mobilise €200 billion for artificial intelligence across Europe, with four Gigafactories as the centrepiece. The formal call for proposals has been delayed twice and is expected to conclude later this year. Portugal's bid competes against proposals from Germany (Deutsche Telekom and Brookfield), France (Scaleway's AION consortium), Finland (around the Lumi supercomputer), and Romania.

For Lisbon, the implications extend beyond Sines. The sovereign compute infrastructure would serve Portuguese SMEs, state institutions, and researchers. The AI ecosystem would require engineers, data scientists, and support staff. Property prices in Sines have already risen on the back of the Start Campus project. A Brussels green light would accelerate the transformation of a town 150 kilometres south of Lisbon into one of Europe's most important tech corridors.

Bottom line: Three weeks ago, Microsoft committed $10 billion to Sines. Now Portugal is asking Brussels for €6 billion more to build a sovereign AI supercomputer next door. The fishing port that once shipped petroleum is becoming the most important piece of digital infrastructure in Southern Europe.

⚡ QUICK HITS

At least nine Portuguese nationals are among the dead following devastating earthquakes in Venezuela. Over 50,000 people remain unaccounted for according to initial reports. Portugal deployed a 50-member emergency civil protection team. Venezuela is home to one of the largest Portuguese diaspora communities in the world, concentrated in Caracas and the surrounding regions. If you have friends, colleagues, or family with Venezuelan-Portuguese connections, they may be trying to reach people right now.

Seven Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP) officers were detained this week for torture, rape, and abuse of power at the Esquadra do Rato in central Lisbon. Civil society associations are demanding the new minister "attack the culture of impunity" within the force. This comes days after the neo-Nazi infiltration of the Municipal Police. Two police scandals in one week.

Passenger trains could return to Sines for the first time in over three decades. Infraestruturas de Portugal is studying a new railway line that would bring passenger services back to the Atlantic port town that hosts the $10 billion Microsoft AI campus, the LNG terminal, and the deep-water container port. Passenger trains to Sines were discontinued in 1990. The current line has been freight-only ever since. The new line, part of Portugal's National Railway Plan, would carry both passengers and cargo. A separate railway connection between Évora and the Spanish border is expected to open in early 2027. Portugal is building one of Europe's most important tech hubs in a town you still can't reach by train. That may finally be about to change.

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🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

LOUIE LOUIE (BAIXA/CHIADO)

Rock in Rio is wrapping up at Parque Tejo. The World Cup match finished at 2am. Half of Lisbon is recovering. And on a quiet set of steps near Chiado, a record shop that started in Porto is waiting for the people who think Sunday afternoon is for flipping through crates.

Louie Louie sits at Escadinhas do Santo Espírito da Pedreira 3, managed by Jorge Dias, one of the pioneers of the used records business in Lisbon. The Porto original is a landmark. The Lisbon branch has become one of the most popular record shops in the city, with a collection that spans genres the way Lisbon spans hills: broadly, unexpectedly, and with the occasional discovery that makes you stop and reconsider everything.

The stock covers Afro, reggae, dub, jazz, soul, funk, disco, house, techno, hip hop, post-punk, psychedelic, soundtracks, world music, rare grooves, and everything between. New pressings sit alongside secondhand finds. The atmosphere is the kind of quiet, focused browsing that only happens in record shops: nobody talks loudly, everyone is looking for something, and the person behind the counter knows more about what's in the crates than you ever will.

This is a record shop with an in-store espresso bar, not a restaurant or cocktail bar. You come to look through vinyl, grab a coffee, and leave with something you didn't know you needed. The space is compact. Sunday hours are 3pm to 7:30pm, so plan accordingly.

→ Vinyl, rare grooves, and Sunday afternoon browsing in Chiado. Find them here ←

Baixa/Chiado, on Escadinhas do Santo Espírito da Pedreira.

Insider tip: Go at 3pm when the doors open on Sunday. Flip through the jazz and Brazilian sections first. Ask Jorge what came in this week. Leave with one record you planned to buy and two you didn't. The café serves coffee, pastéis de nata, and cheesecake during the week, but closes on Sundays, so get your bica beforehand.

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See you tomorrow morning.