The EU’s approach to AI has shifted. What began as a regulatory agenda centered on rights and risk management is now increasingly framed in terms of industrial policy, public investment, and economic competitiveness. The €200 billion investment target announced at the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025 and a further €100 billion announced in the tech sovereignty package, the push for AI Factories and Gigafactories, and the broader shift in policy language all point in the same direction: AI is being treated as a strategic industrial sector. Such a shift raises a question: can the investment claims driving this agenda be verified?
This matters beyond transparency alone. Without a clearer picture of where money is going and on what terms, it becomes difficult to hold decision-makers accountable for their choices or to assess whether the EU’s AI industrial strategy is delivering on its ambitions.
This report maps how the EU funds the AI ecosystem and assesses the data sources available to trace the financial flows. It examines where AI-related spending sits across EU budget programs, the role of the European Investment Bank Group, and how different funding management modes shape what information is publicly available. It also reviews the main commercial databases used to track private investment in European AI companies.
The picture that emerges is one of fragmentation. Headline figures frequently conflate political targets, private pledges, and legally binding commitments. Spending is dispersed across budget lines, financial instruments, intermediaries, and public-private arrangements with differing disclosure rules and varying definitions of what counts as AI. There is no consistent EU-wide method for tagging AI-related expenditure.
The report identifies key data sources, maps their limitations, and builds a baseline for more systematic analysis of EU AI investment. This publication is part of Open Future’s Steering AI Investment work, which explores how investment decisions shape the development and direction of AI in the EU.
