Illustration: Simon Landrein for Bloomberg Opinion
The Solution to Europe’s AI Problem Is Hiding in Plain Sight
Tech giants blame zealous regulators for holding the continent back. But timid funders are the real obstacle to building world-class AI companies.
This column is part of The AI Future You Want, a series about the global questions that are shaping artificial intelligence.
It was over a swanky lunch in Mayfair in 2013 that a local venture capital investor reality-checked the ambitions of what was once Europe’s most important AI company. In between bites of Cantonese cuisine, the founders of DeepMind were telling their backer about their plans to change the world with AI models that were smarter than humans. Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis and co-founder Mustafa Suleyman mentioned they’d just come back from Mountain View, California, where they’d rejected a takeover offer in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They wanted to stay independent and reach for the stars.