The AI Action Summit 2025 in Paris makes it clear: Europe is making significant efforts to set standards for AI regulation and legal certainty. However, regulation is only one building block in securing Europe’s competitiveness in the global AI sector – and this is also about unlocking new potential, as emphasised by eco’s Managing Director Andreas Weiss. Europe also needs ideas on how to motivate private capital and investment in the development of AI innovations “Made in Europe”.
“While massive private investments are flowing into generative AI in the U.S. and China with initiatives like Stargate and Deepseek, Europe lacks a comparable strategy for mobilising private capital for AI innovations. If we aim for technological sovereignty, we have to now set the right economic incentives – through government investments, tax incentives and better framework conditions for venture capital,” says Weiss.
“The often repeated narrative that Europe has already lost the race for Large Language Models (LLMs) is too short-sighted and has been impressively debunked by Deepseek. Yes, the U.S. and China are currently leading, but with initiatives such as Mistral AI, Aleph Alpha and OpenEuroLLM, there are strong European approaches that must be strategically promoted! We should not focus on just replicating existing models, but rather invest in specialised, high-performance and trustworthy AI solutions that build on our European strengths – such as multilingual AI, industrial applications and data-secure and ethical solutions. Germany has very good talent and AI specialists, but they also need a perspective,” Weiss continues.
As Weiss argues: “To position itself as an innovation hub for secure and economically viable AI, Europe needs not only innovation-friendly and clear regulations, but also venture capital, the courage to scale up, and a genuine AI innovation agenda. Now is the time to focus on promotion, funding and growth – before others take over the playing field entirely and the associated value creation happens outside of Europe.”
