In 2025, buying a megawatt-hour of electricity on Europe’s wholesale markets cost about $95 (around €83) on average. But running that same electricity through a server full of the newest AI chips, then renting the chips out at Amazon’s list prices, would generate around $8,540 in rental revenue. This is roughly 90 times the original cost of the electricity, before counting the cost of the chips themselves.
This gap between revenue and power costs is encouraging companies to build data centres and secure electricity for AI: what they can earn from the chips far outweighs the cost of the energy they use. Europe has the electricity, but its data-centre developers struggle to raise the money to build the facilities that earn this return. To profit from the AI boom, Europe needs to build the market where compute—the hardware on which AI runs—is priced and financed.
Bruegel estimates that, in 2026, the EU has about 5% of the world’s AI computing capacity and the US around 78%. The European Commission’s InvestAI plan aims to mobilise €200bn over several years, €20bn of it for AI “gigafactories”. Yet in America, forecasts suggest Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta will spend more than $700bn this year, most of it on AI infrastructure. The EU is therefore putting in about a third of what those four companies are spending in 2026 alone.
Europe is not going to match America’s data-centre spending. But it can extend its electricity markets to encompass computing power. Banks, for their part, will only finance a data centre if they can estimate what the centre will earn over the life of a loan. A public European price for compute, linked to electricity delivered in the EU, gives banks something to lend against. European countries should therefore invest in the compute market, rather than in data centres themselves.
The Americans are in front
The US is already one step ahead. CME Group, a financial derivatives marketplace in Chicago, had planned to start trading compute futures on October 5th. But the US regulator has extended its review until November 9th. The delay buys Europe weeks, not years, since CME’s rival Intercontinental Exchange is preparing similar contracts. Once trading starts, a company can agree today on the price to rent AI chips in several months’ time, bypassing potential rental price hikes by locking in an agreed price.
But the stakes go beyond finance. Whoever sets the “official” price for a commodity tends to dominate it. Indeed, once banks and traders settle on a benchmark, this rarely moves. Take euro interest-rate swaps: after Brexit, the EU passed new rules to pull the clearing of euro-denominated contracts back from London. But the city’s dominance in this area means it still handles more than 90% of euro interest-rate swaps.
If Chicago’s price becomes the global compute benchmark, Europe might struggle to dislodge it. Data centres built in Europe with European public money would be valued against a US yardstick, set under US rules. This comes on top of existing dependencies: Amazon, Microsoft and Google already hold around 70% of Europe’s cloud market, and Washington is using access to advanced chips as a foreign-policy instrument.
A Europe that depends on America for chips, cloud and the price of compute has little leverage left in trade and technology talks. Arab Gulf and Asian investors seeking AI partners would also have little reason to choose Europe.
Where Europe is stronger
Europe has already proven that it can pay for infrastructure through markets. For example, wind farms borrow against long-term contracts to sell their electricity at an agreed price (known as power purchase agreements). Lenders can judge those contracts because busy exchanges publish prices for electricity delivered months and years ahead. In 2025, trading in German power alone covered more than 6,000 terawatt-hours. This is over ten times what Germany uses in a year.
Compute, by contrast, is sold in private deals: a bank looking at a new European data centre has no benchmark for what it will earn in three years. America’s large cloud companies can manage without a public price because, unlike smaller European builders, their own earnings fund most of their building.
The EU should back a standardised, exchange-traded contract for computing capacity, delivered from data centres inside the EU and tied to the electricity that powers them. EPEX SPOT and the European Energy Exchange already run power exchanges that work across borders. A single system sets simultaneous next-day electricity prices for most of the continent. And European Commodity Clearing guarantees payment: if one side of a trade defaults, the other still gets paid.
How Europe can do it
First, Europe should request that its existing power exchanges publish a European compute index (a public daily reference price for renting each type of chip). Second, it must create a standardised, exchange-traded contract combining power and compute, against which longer private deals could then be priced.
The biggest risk for data-centre operators is how much rent their chips will earn before their loans are repaid. Another, smaller, risk is what they pay for electricity, and whether they can get enough of it. One contract selling a fixed amount of computing, backed by a fixed amount of electricity, turns their revenue into a predictable income stream that a bank can value.
The European Commission should lead in this endeavour through its proposed Cloud and AI Development Act, while Europe’s existing exchanges can build the index and contracts under the supervision of the European Securities and Markets Authority. The EU should aim to make a political commitment by the end of 2026; by 2027, it should have a pilot index, run by an existing exchange such as the European Energy Exchange, as the AI gigafactory contracts are awarded; by 2028, a full power-and-compute contract. This would make Europe ready for the first gigafactories coming online.
The EU faces an age-old problem with new exchanges: nobody trades until others are trading. There are ways around this, for example by regulators obliging a market’s biggest players to take part. The EU could require data centres built with public support, including the planned gigafactories, to sell part of their capacity through the European market. The EU and 18 member states have already agreed to jointly buy computing time from the gigafactories, so they could be among the market’s first buyers.
Public money should also go where private investors will not. The European Investment Bank (EIB), which already works with the commission on gigafactories, could offer guarantees that absorb the first losses if trades go wrong—though it has not yet committed to these. The EIB need not cover every loss, however—only enough to give private lenders and traders the confidence to join.
Answering the sceptics
The most obvious objection to a European compute market is that chips age fast. Nvidia brings out a new generation every year, and rents on older chips fall when it does. This means that the compute market cannot copy a 15-year contract, like the wind industry. But with a separate index for each chip generation and shorter contracts, a lender can better evaluate how fast the rent on chips falls, and develop a loan value to pay back within this time.
Europe would thus tie its price to electricity and capacity physically delivered in the EU. On the other hand, Americans contracts—which are set against an index of privately negotiated rents—are still being scrutinised by US regulators. European price cannot cut the red tape that constrains permits and grid connections, it would make financing easier for projects that do get permits.
Advocates of “buy European” rules, including some national governments, will want the market reserved for European firms, but that would defeat the point of an open, AI compute market. Europe’s appeal is its trusted courts and contracts. Arab Gulf, Asian and American firms should be able to trade on the same terms as Europeans.
What should stay European is the public support. EU guarantees should back only infrastructure located inside the EU, while private firms from anywhere can trade freely.
Why Brussels cannot wait
Europe will not own the most chips. But it can still claw back some agency in the geopolitical race to be dominant in AI. A megawatt-hour that sells for $95 as electricity and thousands of dollars as computing is worth competing for. American contracts could start trading as soon as November and, if the global reference price for compute settles in Chicago, Europe will negotiate with Washington over chips, cloud and data as a price-taker. Its partners in the Arab Gulf and Asia will take their business to American venues.
Europe has already shown it can run markets. When the EU launched its emissions trading system in 2005, it was the first big carbon market anywhere. There are now 41 such systems, covering about a quarter of global emissions. When it comes to compute, a European price would give the EU a stake in the rules of the AI economy too. Brussels should not wait for the next budget cycle to decide on the part it wants to play.
About the author
Ivo Prokopiev is a Bulgarian entrepreneur, investor, media publisher and INSEAD executive MBA graduate, with more than 30 years of experience in independent journalism, corporate finance, telecommunication, real estate, digital technologies and clean energy.