US AI startup AIxBlock plugs into Europe’s idle data centres with €1.5 million EU grant and potential €61.5 million funding

U.S.-based AIxBlock, a decentralised AI infrastructure startup, has secured a €1.5 million innovation grant from the European Union, with an additional €61.5 million in pre-approved funding, to support the next phase of its open and distributed compute platform.

The non-dilutive grant – which does not require equity in return – marks a significant milestone for the company as it advances its vision for decentralised, transparent and community-powered AI across Europe.

Founded in 2023, AIxBlock is a unified platform for end-to-end AI development and workflow automation, powered by MCP and decentralised infrastructure. Designed for AI engineers and development teams, it reportedly offers a modular, customisable stack combining data pipelines, low-code automation, distributed training, and access to decentralised compute and model marketplaces. The platform aims to enable scalable, cost-efficient AI development by connecting users to underutilised GPU resources, community-contributed datasets, and fine-tuned models – all within a peer-powered ecosystem.

The startup’s core offering enables users to train and fine-tune models using GPU nodes spread across the continent, automate business processes with over 300 integrated applications, and self-host deployments for data privacy and compliance. It positions itself as a vendor-neutral solution with modular architecture, aiming to reduce costs and avoid vendor lock-in.

With its open contribution model, AIxBlock invites developers, validators and contributors to co-build the platform. The company explains that participants are rewarded based on transparent, on-chain contribution tracking – from compute providers to data validators – creating an incentive-aligned ecosystem.

According to the company, all contributions are monetised and coordinated using blockchain infrastructure, with governance mechanisms such as future DAO participation on the roadmap.

Along with the innovation grant, the company also revealed that an additional €61.5 million in public funding has been provisionally approved, subject to a multi-phase review process. If secured, the funds will support the expansion of AIxBlock’s decentralised GPU network – leveraging underutilised data centres throughout Europe to build scalable and environmentally aligned infrastructure.

AIxBlock’s announcement arrives at a time when the European Union is doubling down on its digital infrastructure strategy. Through initiatives like the AI Continent programme and ongoing public-private investment, the EU aims to boost its capacity in trustworthy, sovereign AI while accelerating the development of energy-efficient, high-performance infrastructure. Recent projections suggest European data centre investment is set to surpass €100 billion by 2030. In this context, AIxBlock’s strategy of repurposing underutilised data centre capacity across the region – instead of building new centralised facilities – aligns with the EU’s ambitions for sustainability, digital independence, and technological competitiveness.

By creating a decentralised compute layer that federates idle GPU resources, the startup positions itself as both a product of and enabler within Europe’s growing AI infrastructure landscape.

The startup is already showing signs of community traction, with over 12,000 users signed up organically. It has seen early adoption by enterprise teams building large-scale AI workflows, which they believe validates the demand for sovereign, decentralised infrastructure in the region.

The €1.5 million EU grant will accelerate onboarding and technical development, with KYC processes already in motion. AIxBlock plans to use the funds to deepen its presence within the EU while retaining full operational independence. Future phases, backed by the pending €61.5 million grant pipeline, will focus on deploying high-performance GPUs (H100s, A100s, and 4090s) at significantly reduced cost, scaling contributor incentives, and rolling out DAO-based governance.

With the EU’s backing, AIxBlock now has both the regulatory validation and early capital needed to pursue its mission of decentralising AI development.

As compute demand and concerns around data control grow, the startup appears well-positioned to offer a sustainable and sovereign alternative to centralised AI infrastructure providers.

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