“investment underscores our commit­ment to fostering a strong digital eco­system in Europe.(...) By supporting the development of data centres, we are not only addressing the immediate demand for data infrastructure, but also laying the groundwork for sus­tainable growth and innovation in the ­digital economy.” However, the market incentives, as outlined above, limit what this approach to pursuing strategic sovereignty can achieve. Without any controls, there is a possibility that, instead of challenging hyperscaler dominance and creating alternative infrastructure, these kinds of interventions un­­intentionally end up supporting American hyperscalers. In other words, there is a possibility that public capital will be used to finance the buildout of computational infrastructure that will be exploited by US hyperscalers. The project does not disclose the intended end user for the site. EIF, CDP and Apto did not respond to our requests for further information on the end user, the connection between the€200 million and the commencement of Lacchiarella project, and other details regarding the project financing. 30 In the absence of public disclosure, we analysed the struc­tural incentives that determine plausible outcomes. First, for a€3.4 bn and 300 MW AI data centre to qualify for a data centre fund, there often needs to be a designated pre­leased anchor tenant contractually bound to the project. We are not aware of any European company that has the scale or capacity to engage in such an offtake agreement. Even pooled and designated demand, such as the Deutsche Telekom Manufacturing AI Cloud, is three times smaller in investment size. From the data centre builder perspective, a need for a stable and long term customer makes an Ameri­can hyperscaler a highly favoured candidate as the end user, compared with riskier, short-term leases by multiple 30  After the writing process for this paper ended, we received limited information from EIF on the project. See Saari, L.& Kaltheuner, F.(2026) Issue#16 EU AI Cloud – Industrial Policy for the Hyperscalers? Case Apto and EIF. EU AI Industrial Policy Monitor, at https://euaipolicymonitor.substack.com/p/issue-16-eu-ai-cloud-industrial-policy The example of APTO MARKET General Special (public/regulated) Figure 11 € AI compute AI compute€ Hyperscaler client € AI compute Other customers € GPUs GPU manufacturers € Power, fibre Customer? Lacchiarella site Source: Authors, based on Arun 2025 Power, fibre € builds Focus on built-to-suit data centers for hyperscalers APTO € Subsidiary PIMCO European Data Center Fund EIB Give€200m CDP 24 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung e.V.