Against that backdrop, Europe’s reliance on American-made AI begins to look like a liability. In a worst-case scenario, though experts consider the possibility remote, the US could choose to block access to AI services and critical digital infrastructure. More plausibly, the Trump administration could use Europe’s dependence as leverage as the two sides pursue a trade deal. “This dependence is a liability in any negotiation—and we are increasingly going to negotiate with the United States,” says Taddeo.
The European Commission, the White House and the UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology did not respond to requests for comment.
To hedge against those risks, European countries have attempted to shore up AI production through funding programs, targeted regulation, and partnerships with academic institutions. Some efforts have focused on creating competing large language models for native European languages, such as Apertus and GPT-NL.
However, as long as ChatGPIT or Cloud continues to outperform European-made chatbots, the US lead in AI will only grow. Nejdal says, “These domains are often winners for everyone. When you have a really good platform, everyone goes there.” “Not being able to produce cutting-edge technology in this field means you won’t be able to move forward. You will always feed the big players with your input, so they will become even better and you will be left further behind.”
mind the Gap
Lobbyists claim it is not immediately clear to what extent the UK or EU intend to pursue “digital sovereignty”. Does sovereignty require full self-sufficiency across the vast AI supply chain, or only superior capability in a narrow set of subjects? Does it call for the exclusion of US-based providers or the availability of only domestic options? “It’s quite vague,” says Boniface De Champrice, senior policy manager at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a membership organization for technology companies. “At this stage it appears to be more of a narrative.”
Nor is there broad consensus on what policy should be pursued to create the conditions for Europe to become self-reliant. Some European suppliers advocate a strategy whereby European businesses would be required, or at least encouraged, to buy from domestic AI firms – similar to China’s reported approach to its domestic processor market. Ying Cao, CTO of Magix Technologies, a Belgium-based organization developing AI-specific processors for use in space, argues that unlike grants and subsidies, such an approach would help drive demand. “It’s more important than just access to capital,” says Cao. “The most important thing is that you can sell your product.” But those who advocate open markets and deregulation claim that trying to exclude US-based AI companies risks putting domestic businesses at a disadvantage to global peers, left to choose which AI products are best suited for them. “From our perspective, sovereignty means having choice,” says De Champris.
But for all the disagreement over policy niceties, there is a widespread belief that closing the performance gap for US leaders is extremely feasible even for budget- and resource-constrained laboratories, as DeepSeek has demonstrated. “If I already think we won’t catch up, I won’t do it [try]” Nejdal says. SOOFI, the open source model development project in which Nejdal is involved, intends to introduce a competitive general purpose language model with about 100 billion parameters within the next year.
Nejdal claims, “Progress in this area will no longer depend in large part on the largest GPU cluster.” “We will be the European DeepSeek.”
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