Europe is third since the 2000s. The pushed the Euro to try to limit it (and from the mouth of someone who was present when they pushed, it was also caused by the black Wednesday of 92, the attacks on currencies increased, and the cost to rebuff them too).
And yes, basically, no one should include europe in the comparison until US oil fields are depleted, and even then at best it would be a race for the second place. You can't compete without gas and oil or a huge manufacturing lead, and europe don't have any, and only have specific subset of manufacturing (basically sensors, electronics, avionics, optics, and handmade clothing) that isn't workforce-intensive, nor resource-intensive.
you can buy Chinese phones/cars in EU, so we don't fall behind
though in 3.5 months they are gonna ban EU consumers from buying cheap things directly from AliExpress and groom July 1st you will have to pay 3EUR for each ordered item, including that 1EUR screen protector, because it's much better when you can feed some useless middleman than saving money, thanks EU!
> you can buy Chinese phones/cars in EU, so we don't fall behind
With that logic, every programmer on this site should spend as much time as possible on Facebook. This will make their salary equal to that of a Meta employee!
Consuming something is not the same as being able to produce it.
I would say if all of your doomastrophizing comes to light (the myriad of collapses and depressions and winters in your post), then there is no opportunity for anyone anywhere, and we should all stock up on bullets and cigarettes while we can.
Yup, absolutely! People before us already lived through the Great Depression, people already lived through two World Wars, and despite all that there were still some technological advancements made and some good opportunities amongst the chaos! There's obviously going to be pains from transitioning into a new world order, but humanity will still keep on living. Just don't expect the next world to be the same as before!
I think it's important to know and practice your passion, even if you have to work on something different to pay the bills. You can only be good at something if you really like it, and you never know what opportunity you'll stumble onto if you're ready for it.
Proof: Most big EU companies use Claude or Gemini or OpenAI, not Mistral. That choice was made recently.
Things have changed in the loud echo chambers of the internet, maybe (but not really, since people were saying that EU data sovereignty was happening any time now since 2016).
> Proof: Most big EU companies use Claude or Gemini or OpenAI, not Mistral. That choice was made recently.
IS a statement with no supporting facts considered "proof"? Just the public list of Mistral customers (https://mistral.ai/customers) is proof alone that quite a few big EU companies are _not_ in fact using Open AI or Claude or Gemini at the strategic level.
Or OpenAI's customers, of which the only big European ones I can spot are Scania and Philips: https://openai.com/stories/
Note: I'm talking about strategic enterprise AI deployments for the company or at least a division, not individual developers being allowed to use Claude Code etc. The moat and the money will be in the former, not latter.
I consult for various companies and have definitely seen a trend. It's not quite the rupture that some expect but clearly not nothing either. Until very recently, the risk assessment of using US providers was considered very hypothetical. Today it still doesn't feel imminent, but it does feel very real.
Of course, it will be slow and painful and Europeans will need to use their own services for them to grow and mature.
My _feeling_ is that a lot of EU/European politicians has talked a lot more about the need to be independent from the US after Trump threaten Greenland. At least in the nordic countries. Not only concerning data & privacy, but defence, communications, space etc. All areas. The wheel has started to turn. You will not see it if you look around. But in 10 years time, maybe more, Europe will have stopped depending on the US. And that will hit US hard. We pay a lot of money in services to the US.
The politicians can talk, but they needed to set up an environment that would've let a European company have a decent shot at competing with the best AI models. But they didn't. Should've thought of that before being proud of setting up those strict tech regulations.
>While few companies announce this publicly, I know from personal experience with corporate clients
Well I have even more personal experience that contradicts yours, and this isn't true at all. Everyone uses Claude / Gemini / OpenAI. Mistral isn't even on the table.
Come on, compared to Google Workspace / Microsoft's whatever-it's-called-these-days, the cost of switching from one LLM provider to another is pretty much zero.
Having an option at the back of your mind is all it takes right now, until push comes to shove of course.
This moat doesn't seem to be much of a moat considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage - except DeepSeek, which would be a strange choice for Europeans looking for data sovereignty.
> This moat doesn't seem to be much of a moat considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage - except DeepSeek, which would be a strange choice for Europeans looking for data sovereignty.
Hang on, where are you getting the numbers from? I looked and I couldn't find any numbers on enterprises who opened their wallets for custom-trained models.
I looked, and because I believed that it might be a good business opportunity to explore, I did spend a bit of time trying to find numbers. I came away with the feeling that the winner in the AI space is going to be whoever successfully whitelabels their offering.
> considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage
How do you measure "usage" in an enterprise/commercial context where no data on usage is available to you? I don't expect Mistral AI to make it's money on OpenRouter.
They offer self-hosted models for big corporate customers. I would also expect those serious about the security of their data to use that option.
So you would never get the usage of those customers
If you are a company based in Europe it is silly to give your data security and privacy to a company based in Europe.
If you are in Iran, you don't want to give your data to your government.
If you are in France, you don't want to give your data to your government.
etc
If you are in France, and you host your e-mails in a datacenter in Hong-Kong, well good luck for the authorities to get it.
If you host it in "secure France", on the paper you will have more privacy and laws behind you, but in reality you are jumping into the mouth of the shark.
This is why governments are promoting: "yes yes, host here don't worry, we will protect you"
This flat out isn't true. Police forces / investigative authorities have been collaborating with one another since 1923: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol . We have tons of examples of this working for the digital world as well (like Proton complying with Swiss legal orders at the behest of non-Swiss police forces for illegal activities in other countries).
The trick is to host your data in a country with a strong rule of law, and avoid illegal / geopolitical lines. If you're an American company hosting stuff in Russia, you can bet the GRU/SVR would be very happy to abuse it. If you're running a torrent site in Ukraine, you can bet the US would be very happy to claim extraterritorial magic jurisdiction and get you extradited from Poland.
As a French company, you're already beholden to French law and French legal decisions. "Data is hosted in Hong Kong" doesn't matter in the slightest, it only exposes you to more risk.
reply