Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch has urged Europe to invest more in AI infrastructure amid fears that the continent is falling behind the US and China in tech development.
“It’s important to have European players coming to the game,” Mensch said at the Visionaries Unplugged conference in Paris yesterday. “Europe needs to invest in owning and operating the infrastructure so that the money that is being made will not just go back to the hyperscalers in the US.”
Mensch was joined at the conference by a cohort of tech luminaries, including DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Anthropic founder Dario Amodei, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Many of them echoed Mensch’s sentiment.
“Ambition in Europe is on par or higher than the US — it’s not a talent problem but a structural one,” said Schmidt.
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Xavier Niel, a French billionaire tech investor, added the continent must retain control over AI developments.
“Models built in the US and China are not built with the same kind of life we have in Europe,” said Niel, whose telecommunications firm Iliad recently pledged €3bn to advance AI development in France.
“I don’t want our kids relying on models that are not created with the same rules that we have in Europe, for people in my country or my continent to not have models they can rely on.”
Founders and investors at the event repeatedly called for regulation in Europe that is “flexible enough” to support innovation and competitiveness, according to a press release.
The call comes as the EU pushes ahead with its landmark AI Act, which entered force last year. The act lays out a rulebook for governing AI based on risk levels, designed to ensure the technology is deployed safely, transparently, and ethically.
The US, meanwhile, is moving in a very different direction. While the EU imposes strict rules, the Trump administration is removing AI protections and giving tech sector leaders prominent roles in government.
At the AI Action Summit in Paris this week, US Vice President JD Vance criticised the EU’s efforts to regulate the burgeoning AI sector. He said the Trump administration will not accept foreign governments “tightening the screws” on US tech firms.
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