A lawsuit filed in Kyiv has brought to light a government commitment to pay up to ₴14.6 billion (about €293 million) for computing capacity at a planned artificial-intelligence data centre, even if public agencies do not use it. The payment terms sit in a contract annex absent from the public tender summary, according to court papers and procurement records reviewed on Friday.
Eastline Civic Compute, a losing bidder, filed the case on 7 October against the Civic Computing Agency, the state body running the tender. It argues that rival Fermion Vale was selected on terms other bidders could not see. The filing asks a Kyiv administrative court to suspend the award and require publication of the full contract.
The payment clause at issue
The public summary caps the initial three-year purchase at ₴2.1 billion (about €42 million). But the annex, reproduced in the lawsuit, sets out availability payments for as long as eight years. If government use falls below 70% of reserved capacity, the agency would still pay a monthly fee, up to the ₴14.6 billion ceiling.
The proposed centre, planned for an industrial site outside Lviv, is designed to provide 96 megawatts of power for computing. The lawsuit says that scale of commitment matters to investors because it shifts much of the risk of weak customer demand from the company to the state. It also argues that no public tender notice described a minimum-payment guarantee.
Eastline’s lawyer, Joanna K. Piotrowska, said the undisclosed clause changed the financial picture bidders were asked to assess. “A ceiling is not a budget line, but it can still change what investors think the state will pay,” she said. The court has not yet ruled on the challenge or the interpretation of the annex.
A ceiling is not a budget line, but it can still change what investors think the state will pay.
Joanna K. Piotrowska, lawyer for Eastline Civic Compute
A financing presentation cited in the filing values Fermion Vale at €2.1 billion if the data-centre plan reaches its projected scale. That is a prospective valuation, not a completed sale or public-market listing. The papers say lenders were shown the government’s long-term capacity payments as support for the project’s expected revenues; the company’s actual financing and valuation could not be independently confirmed.
Agency defends the deal
The Civic Computing Agency said the guarantee was a maximum commitment, not an automatic payout, and that payments would depend on yearly budgets and verified service availability. Its deputy director, Monika Fousek-Uherová, said the state needed reserved computing capacity for translation, document processing and public-service systems. “We are buying an option to use capacity, not promising the supplier a profit,” she said.
The agency did not explain why the annex was omitted from the tender summary. Fermion Vale did not answer questions sent on Friday. The court registry showed no order halting the contract, and the agency said it would continue preparations while the case proceeds. Ukraine’s government has promoted shared digital infrastructure as a way to avoid each department building its own computing systems.
Public-finance analyst Antje C. Scharf said long-term capacity contracts can make sense when demand is uncertain, but the guarantee should be visible before bidders submit prices. “The key question is whether parliament and the public can see the maximum exposure before it becomes a yearly obligation,” she said. The annex specifies a ceiling, but the public budget has not yet set aside that full amount.
The court is due to hear preliminary arguments on 22 October. Eastline says it will seek disclosure of the scoring sheets and payment schedules; the agency says it will respond through the court. If the award stands, the government could face years of payments for computing capacity that agencies may not fully use, while a successful challenge could force a fresh tender.
