At TechBBQ, Europe’s AI conversations kept coming back to: Who’s actually in control?
At the TechBBQ conference in Copenhagen, European tech leaders discussed the need for digital sovereignty in the age of AI. The conversation centered on reducing reliance on U.S. and Chinese infrastructure to maintain control over AI development.
Why it matters
As AI becomes foundational to the economy, European nations are increasingly concerned about their lack of domestic control over the underlying technology.
At TechBBQ in Copenhagen, the conversation among investors, founders, and operators from across Europe wasn’t just about what to build with AI, but who should control it. No matter where you were during the annual Nordic conference, from onstage to cocktail hours and after-parties, the chatter kept coming back to how Europe can gain more control over the technology powering AI.
That question of sovereignty — which fittingly matched this year’s theme of “Emerging from Agency” — was especially timely after Anthropic’s AI models Mythos and Fable became unavailable to users outside Europe earlier this year.
The incident led many in the European ecosystem to think seriously about what it means to own the models and the infrastructure underpinning this AI wave, instead of renting that power from the U.S. and China.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in