BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Seventy-six companies have bid to develop Europe's artificial intelligence gigafactories, the EU's tech chief said on Monday, hailing a bigger than expected response to the bloc's push to catch up with the U.S. and China in this key technology.

The European Commission made the announcement four months after it allocated 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in EU funding for the construction of four AI gigafactories across the bloc.

Such facilities, in essence large-scale AI computing and data storage hubs, will be equipped with about 100,000 state-of-the-art AI chips.

"We got 76 submissions proposing to set up AI gigafactories in 16 member states and across 60 different sites," EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen told a press conference.

"And this exceeds far beyond our expectations and this showcases Europe's growing momentum and enthusiasm for innovating in AI in Europe," she said, declining to name the companies because of business confidentiality information.

The EU executive said applicants included EU and non-EU companies, among them tech giants, data centre operators, telecoms providers, power suppliers and financial investors.

"Together they have now indicated plans to acquire at least 3 million latest generation of AI processors (GPUs) in total," Virkkunen said. The Commission will launch an official call for setting up the AI gigafactories at the end of the year.

($1 = 0.8537 euros)