Tag : News
By Nicolas von Bülow and Stéphane Valorge, co-founders and Managing Partner at Clipperton
As we can witness every day — in our work, our institutions, and our social lives — technology increasingly shapes the decisions we make, the relationships we build, and the dynamics that govern our world. The capacity of our institutions to defend themselves, to separate truth from lies, and to empower individuals now depends, more and more, on our control over key technologies.
But what technologies? The conventional wisdom and policymakers tend to mention data centers, research labs, production facilities, and large application vendors. But the real battle lies elsewhere, in the control over foundational infrastructure and the technologies that underpin it.
And Europe is, up to now, still largely watching these unfold from the sidelines.
This foundational infrastructure can candidly be seen as three distinct layers :
- Information infrastructure — foundational knowledge models (AI etc.) and algorithms;
- Access infrastructure — cloud platforms anx²d orchestration layers;
- Computational infrastructure — processing technologies, especially those optimized for AI workloads, quantum computers etc.
These key technologies provide a strategic edge across the entire digital value chain — even a small increase in competitiveness at this level can cascade into a major impact downstream. Yet in each of these layers, the United States and Asia currently hold the upper hand. Foundation models are led by OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek, with only France’s Mistral AI still keeping Europe in the race. Cloud computing is controlled by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba, with European providers holding a mere 2% market share. The processors at the heart of AI — GPUs and NPUs — are almost entirely designed and manufactured in the U.S. or Asia.
Europe, by contrast, is primarily a consumer of core technologies, not a producer, and certainly not a rule-maker. This is more than a technological gap; it is a strategic, and potentially existential, vulnerability. Without mastery of these critical layers, Europe cannot set the terms of access or be able to even pretend to be economically or politically attractive, not to say dictate in any way its terms.
Yet the continent is not lacking in talent or ambition. VSORA, for instance, a company developing radically new AI processors optimized for energy efficiency and performance, is a striking example of European innovation in a domain long abandoned to the Silicon Valley. But such cases remain the exception, not the rule. VSORA’s recent €40 million equity round is, in fact, further evidence of Europe’s structural challenges in financing foundational technologies. At similar stages of development, US competitors routinely raise hundreds of millions of dollars, supported by ecosystems where talent has matured more uniformly, making it easier to find the people who create, understand, and finance disruptive technologies.
The problem is not just about capital availability or industrial policy. It is about ambition and people. If Europe wants to build its foundational technology infrastructure, it must also raise the bar on human capital and expertise. That means attracting and retaining the world’s best engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs, as well as experienced investors who are willing to back them early and decisively.
Too often, Europe loses its talent to ecosystems — most notably in the U.S. — that offer faster feedback loops, deeper capital pools, and stronger industrial partnerships.
What Europe needs is a far bolder and coordinated strategy to foster the emergence of core technological infrastructure, anchored in the development of a truly integrated European ecosystem. This will require a profound cultural shift:
- Less fragmentation, and more alignment between academic excellence, industrial capacity, and public capital – including procurement policies that favor local technologies;
- Less short-termism, and more long-term bets on foundational technologies with well-articulated selection processes, supported by deep, patient capital;
- Less risk aversion, and more confidence in Europe’s own talent and leadership, and ability to attract expertise from outside of the continent.
Here’s the good news: Europe already has world-class universities, national research centers, and bold entrepreneurs – along with a vast pool of European talent currently based abroad, particularly in the U.S., that could be drawn back. And while the challenge is real, its financial scale is measured in billions – not hundreds of billions. This is not about building massive production facilities or investing in heavy physical infrastructure. It’s about designing the right incentives to ensure that the rare, groundbreaking technological projects born in Europe are properly identified, understood, and financed – through targeted university grants, smart subsidies, and capital commitments to European funds aligned with strategic tech priorities.
We are not too late. But Europe’s institutions must act with urgency, focus, and coordination.
This is not just a race for market share. It is a race to determine whose infrastructure will shape how intelligence is developed, deployed, and governed for decades to come, in Europe and beyond.
Europe can still participate as an architect and not just a bystander of that future.