Europe Is Tired And Wants Its Own AI

Earlier this month I attended Vivatecha major technical conference in Paris. One fear dominated the discussion: a hope finally insisting on using American AI, trained on American values. While the US and China are locked in an AI arms race, France and Germany, which see their technology second to none, are feeling left out. Not only do they want to be heard, but they are making plans to deal with this problem. If “dominion” was your word in the drinking game, you could burn it down within three hours.

In my years in the technology industry, I have been involved in several initiatives with countries to adopt the Silicon Valley effect. Although there have been many success stories, no country or market has come close to matching the ecosystem and ideas behind companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. While investors throw big bucks at American companies, Europeans get crumbs. One statistic I heard a few times last week was that Anthropic’s recent $65 billion investment was more than the total investment in European and UK AI startups last year. Actual results statements by the EU seem to confirm this.

However, the royal talks at Vivatech were filled with optimism. Optimists pointed to new funding, operational initiatives, and next-generation technology that may not be as widely used as the mainstream languages. And several mentioned a wild card that could be the biggest help to European technology in years: Donald Trump.

Vivatech joined the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, where French President Emmanuel Macron trained officials on AI in governance. If the US continues its nationalistic AI strategy, he said, France will react to go alone. Aiden Gomez, CEO of Toronto-based Cohere, also tried to explain the urgency to the crowd at Evian. “We have to make sure that democracy lives on the second floor, and that’s not true today,” Gomez told me at Vivatech. “I think the G7 understands that we need different types of AI agents.”

It sounds hypocritical for Europe to think it can create the second best AI in the world. More than 20 countries may need to work together, address their global appetites for new attractions and strategies, and attract unprecedented investment. Above all, Europe must change from a dangerous mindset to a lunar mindset. But Macron has gone further. Its “Choose France” initiative has won more than 100 billion euros in AI infrastructure, funded by Softbank’s. 75 billion-euro building a large data center in France—waiting for approval, of course.

Speaking of cooperation, Gomez tells me that Cohere is trying to connect the international cooperation, starting one and German AI company Aleph Alpha. The idea is to combine resources in engineering and construction to find an independent solution. “A few weeks ago, I had the king of Spain to sign an MOU with them Indrawhich is the largest technology company in Spain,” he says.

Yann LeCun, an AI pioneer who recently stepped down as Meta’s chief AI scientist, follows suit. Project Tapestrya great effort between governments and private companies to cooperate in building a high-quality model of the foundation of the border. “Governments around the world want AI governance,” he says. “The only way I can see this happening is if there is an open, free base, on top of which everyone can create an advocate for their own languages, cultures, practices, and political biases.”