Europe invents tech but US and China pull ahead, as seen with the Web, MP3, batteries and solar cells. AI is no different. Jürgen Schmidhuber, Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis helped pioneer AI, yet US firms like Claude, Chat GPT and Gemini and Chinese ones such as Deep Seek, Qwen շ and Kimi dominate the stack with chips and data centres. A recent essay, "Europe 2031: What Getting AI Wrong Means for Us", warns that Europe will lose the ability to shape its future, become politically and economically sidelined, and fail to defend its values.

Yet Europe has talent, a dynamic startup scene, and sovereign focus on defence‑AI. Finnish entrepreneur 각 Peter Sarlin sold Silo AI for $665mn and nowCorps Post Scriptum invests in AI firms like Legora, Lovable and Advanced Machine Intelligence. He argues that AI across all sectors and quantum computing via QPUs could give Europe a competitive edge. Public distrust of AI offers a chance for Europe to build a democratically accountable governance regime, with Meredith Whittaker advising Post Scriptum.

But the response is too small. Only 60 of Mario Draghi’s 383 recommendations are implemented, and a €800bn annual investment gap remains. European capitalists must create their own AI money‑mobilisation machine to keep pace with American and Chinese capitalism.