Europe Mounts the Artificial-Intelligence Barricades

Company and government executives convened today in Paris in an attempt to catalyze Europe’s artificial-intelligence industry. With the continent’s pursuit of Chinese and Silicon Valley companies so far falling flat, its economy risks being left behind on what many see as one of the 21st century’s big growth drivers. Before the meeting opened, French President Emmanuel Macron touted a total of €109 billion ($113 billion) of investments in AI development.

The European path toward AI is distinct because unlike the “closed-source approach” favored by US entrepreneurs, its coders make their models open for others to improve upon, according to the chief executive of Mistral, the French company some predict could become the EU’s AI champion. Arthur Mensch told Bloomberg Television that “open source models make things much cheaper,” and pointed to the success of China’s DeepSeek, which builds on methods used by European peers.