alt Hacker NewsI think this view stems mainly from the fact that we don’t have any big names like Anthropic or OpenAI, and that Europe is a bit slow off the mark. We do indeed have many promising tech start-ups, and plenty of talent, particularly in the field of AI. However, you don’t hear anything about many of these start-ups, as they often do not work on the flashy stuff. I would even go so far as to say that Europe is generally a continent where many influential companies fly under the radar. We simply don’t have any ‘rock stars’ like the US does. What we can actually be criticised for is squandering potential. Many promising and potentially disruptive developments remain confined to the universities. Unlike in the US, start-ups aren’t so easily set up here and showered with venture capital. However, we are not following the Chinese model either, where tech start-ups are bankrolled by the government - and I think we have atleast to choose for one of these models to accelerate development.
imho the biggest issue is structural - that investment and capital is spread out. Having tried to launch a startup in the EU and failed due to lack of access to capital, we could have moved to hamburg or berlin or london or paris, but not a place bigger than all of them at once the way a startup can in the us moving to san fran or NY.
Such concentration of wealth couldn't exist in the EU, its structurally designed to spread out wealth amongst its member nations. Probably a good thing for quality of life but it definately makes access to capital harder.