Throughout my decades of covering the technology sector, I have witnessed numerous nations attempt to replicate the Silicon Valley effect. While individual success stories have certainly emerged, no single country or market has managed to rival the ecosystem and mindset that propelled the rise of companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. While investors pour massive amounts of capital into American enterprises, European counterparts receive significantly fewer resources. A statistic frequently cited last week was that Anthropic’s recent $65 billion fundraising effort surpassed the entire amount invested in European and UK AI startups over the previous year. Results reported by the EU seem to validate this disparity.
Sovereignty at the Forefront
Nevertheless, discussions regarding sovereignty at Vivatech were filled with a sense of optimism. Proponents highlighted substantial new funding, collaborative initiatives, and next-generation technologies that might not demand as many resources as the leading large language models. Furthermore, several pointed toward a wildcard that could prove to be the most significant boon to European technology in decades: Donald Trump.
The timing of Vivatech overlapped with the G7 conference in Evian-les-Bains, France, where French President Emmanuel Macron addressed AI executives on the necessity of sovereignty. He asserted that if the United States persisted with its nationalistic approach to AI, France would take independent measures. Aiden Gomez, the CEO of Toronto-based Cohere, also conveyed a sense of urgency to the audience in Evian. Gomez stated at Vivatech that they need to ensure a democracy occupies the second-place position, which is currently not the case. He added that the G7 understands the requirement for a diverse supply chain of AI providers.
The Ambition of European AI
It might seem unrealistic for Europe to believe it can construct the world’s second-best AI infrastructure. Success would require more than 20 nations to collaborate closely, overcome their habitual bureaucratic tendencies that stifle innovation, and attract unprecedented investment. Primarily, Europe must transition from a risk-averse mindset to a bold, moonshot mentality. However, Emmanuel Macron has achieved some progress. His Choose France initiative has secured pledges exceeding 100 billion euros in AI infrastructure, anchored by a 75 billion-euro commitment from Softbank to build massive data centers in France, pending regulatory approvals.
Collaborative Efforts
Regarding partnerships, Gomez explains that Cohere is attempting to build a multinational chain, starting with an agreement with the German AI firm Aleph Alpha. The strategy is to pool resources in both engineering and infrastructure for a sovereign-first approach. He mentioned that a few weeks ago, he was with the King of Spain to sign a memorandum of understanding with Indra, the largest technology company in Spain.
Yann LeCun, the AI pioneer who recently stepped down as Meta’s chief AI scientist, is spearheading Project Tapestry, a massive initiative involving governments and private industry to join forces in creating a state-of-the-art foundation model. He notes that governments across the world desire AI sovereignty. He believes the only viable path is the creation of an open, free foundation model, upon which anyone can build their own specialized assistant tailored to their specific language, culture, value system, and political biases.
A New Catalyst for Change
While these plans appear reasonable, they echo previous failed attempts to elevate European technology. However, in 2026, there is a new factor: the Trump administration's policies, which make the current status quo unsustainable. For generations, the US has attracted Europe’s top scientists; however, many now feel unwelcome. European enrollment in US universities is declining. Jakob Uszkoreit, CEO of the AI-based biotech firm Inceptive, says that even by the end of Donald Trump’s first term, he observed talent departing the US, a trend that has accelerated under the current administration.
According to Uszkoreit, it would not require much to significantly drain that talent from the US. He says he could easily assemble an all-star team of Europeans, many of whom would leave their comfortable US frontier lab positions, provided they receive reasonable personal incentives and the ability to do their best work. Notably, both Uszkoreit and Gomez are prime examples of the talent the US stands to lose if foreign researchers remain discouraged—they are among the eight coauthors of the seminal Transformers paper that catalyzed generative AI, with seven of the eight being foreign-born.
Survival and Sovereignty
Earlier this month, the Trump administration provided European tech with perhaps its strongest incentive to accelerate its own ecosystem. This occurred when it attempted to restrict Anthropic's powerful Claude Fable model through strict export control regulations, denying access to foreign entities. Whether one argues this crackdown was justified, from the European perspective, it served as a wake-up call that sovereignty now equals survival. A foreign company cannot build a reliable business model around Claude or any other American tool if the US government can deny access at will. More alarmingly, the designation even prohibited access by foreign nationals employed at Anthropic, including those who assisted in developing Fable. Anthropic promptly removed the model from the market, but the implication was clear: Europeans cannot rely on American companies.
European startups are already feeling the push from the US government’s recent actions. Michael Förtsch, CEO of the chip startup Qant, remarks that the attention currently directed toward Europe would not be the same without Donald Trump. The brief export controls on Fable, he notes, triggered an entirely new discourse on sovereignty within Europe. As Uszkoreit puts it, Europe had become complacent under a near-hegemonic status, but the US has clarified that in the new world order, that era is over. Europe now has no choice but to pursue AI sovereignty.
