EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

What makes fusion research "future critical"? I honestly don't see any realistic timeline where fusion energy contributes >10% to any nations electricity grid in 2040.

Sure, throwing money at the problem might accelerate things marginally, but you might as well build out renewables, battery storage and invest into grid connectivity, with greater effect (over the next decades), less risk and faster RoI.

It's the same in the UK. Pensioners had their heating allowance removed to plug a £22 bn 'black hole', whilst tonnes of money is pledged to AI. I can imagine the EU is in a similar state.

I was with you until your last two words.

Nuclear fusion has no clear path to reach viability with just a fraction of that amount, not even close.

Nuclear fusion definitely needs more than a trillion

Indeed.

The EU grants are ridiculously red tapey. Companies have entire departments dedicated to the red tape that European grants require, from the initial participation / auction with hundreds or thousands of pages of documentation, through various stages of thorough checkbox ticking, to the final reception of the project.

Only the usual players with well established "EU Funds" departments can realistically get them, such as Accenture, IBM, Cognizant, Microsoft etc.

I am European and I tend to agree. The way it's currently going, it'll self-select for people who are good at filling out forms, which will either be the giant companies that can afford to hire what are effectively tax-funded civil servants (they happen to be employed by companies, but only exist because of the government and are effectively a tax on business).

Or there'll be a common European subgenre of "startups" that exclusively draw funding from EU/govs because they're great at filling out forms and telling paper pushers what they want to hear. Then they ship some hypercompliant product nobody wants to use.

That's why we need Elon to come to Europe and get rid of all those regulations and restrictions! We need a European DOGE!

That is how it feels sometimes. The regulators want to be in control, as if "they are responsible for anything good that comes", while the truth is that they are only able to somewhat restrict or nudge a process, while any strong process will happen regardless of it.

I've been thinking recently this is where the EU should start. I don't know if it could be achieved with some top-down initiative, but it would definitely need investment to become one day competitive against the US providers.

Sadly, AI will be needed for defense.

Yes, that's what the arms manufacturers want. Let's not do (much of) that.

I agree, I think they are trying to cargo-cult Silicon Valley ecosystem without realizing that it will never have a chance in European's clueless bureaucracy, massive social safety nets etc. It doesn't mean nothing can be built, but it won't ever be as effective and bleeding edge for various good and bad reasons and mere fraction of whatever goals aimed for.

And defense spending is a must, how in 2025 they could NOT invest easily 5% of GDP into security is beyond me, thats not a bad requirement from trump actually (if some time is given to reshuffle budgets). There are threats from all sides - one genocidal dictator on our borders repeatedly keeps stating how he will wipe out few hundreds of millions with atomic bombs aimed at our cities. Inner threats with Hungary and Slovakia now.

Then there are global threats, be it China or maybe even US if trade wars will go on 100%, and who knows what Turkey actually wants. Yet Leyden's blind focus on green deal when whole world literally abandoned it, killing our industries while making 0 difference long term is... I don't have a nice word for it. If there is actually some sound logic behind those moves she failed remarkably with communicating them to literally everybody.

both

Only big corp have the capacity to comply with EU regulation in the first place.

The big difference is that this is a top-down gov run iniative, it will by nature be very different than a free market iniative.

> I don’t understand Europe, why don’t they just focus on hyper growth with limited oversight like America?

Well, you've kind of answered it yourself, because the EU is not America. It's an economic and political union formed of very different countries with diverse interests, though those interests primarily are centered around the individual and their rights, and not the corporations' profits, like America is.

And yes, I know it's an oversimplification.

EU is not a homogeneous single entity. Every state is driving their own agenda, and every state is divided into multiple parties often pulling in different directions. It slows down decision-making, in both good and bad. Oftentimes it's hard to sell a Pan-European long-term benefit, if it's cost is that some member states have to lose something in the short term.

You could make the argument that similar problems exist in the US too, but I'd argue it's worse in the EU.

There is no European (capital) market and the national markets are too small to compete with the US or China. European companies are therefore unlikely to gain trust from investors that they will be able to compete.

Hence these kinds of top-down iniatives are in a sense the best they can do given rather poor ircumstances for private investment.

I believe it's because they have this massive monster in Brussels that needs something to do (chiringuitos) to extract the maximum amount of money—corruption.

Because people in Europe are generally scared of a free market without strong social security, but believe in government oversight (no matter how often it fails).

In the spirit of HN rules, actual answering instead of snark:

1. The memory of Nazis using centralised industrial might and information to kill millions of people (google dutch insurance records Nazis)

2.a much stronger history of workers rights and distrust of rich people together with a different attitude to gouvernement making it politically challenging

Can hate it or love it, but the median life expectancy in Europe is much less correlated with wealth and _I think_ is higher from memory, child hunger and food insecurity is much lower and homelessness and other corporate abuse is much less of a problem corrected for wealth and population.

Whether we manage to keep this remains to be seen, but I think it's a reasonable set of different preferences

What's an "AI gigafactory"?

You do understand the difference between VC money and government money right?

As a citizen of the EU I care greatly when governments spend money that for one they do not have, therefore saddling me and everyone else with more debt,and two when that money is spent not in the most efficient manner but given to the established players who can fill forms the proper way as highlighted in the numerous comments above yours.

If a VC like Softbank blows 100B on a bad investment It doesn't affect me but when its my hard earned tax money that could have been spent on other things, then it matters very greatly.

Your analysis points out some real problems, but I think they are more systemic rather than just cultural. (This is not to say that the cultural issues are not real)

1. Startups mostly leave because Europe doesn not have a private capital ecosystem and hence entrepreneurs can not get sufficient funding for growth.

2. There is some truth to this statement in the sense that some people have this mentality but is not true in general. There are profitable companies in Europe and there are jurisdictions (Denmark, Ireland, Estonia, etc) where it is reasonably attractive to have a company. The data does not show that this makes a difference: the biggest startup markets are still in the larger countries that have a larger (capital) market, even though these countries are usually more hostile to business.

3. Yes, that is the case with all government subsidies, however often their founding documents claim to wish to support small and new things.

> Europe's most ambitious entrepreneurs leave for silicon valley because audacious ambition is heavily discouraged culturally.

Good. We've all seen Silicon Valley.

We'll keep our Engineers, Scientists, and large inter-union projects and organisations like CERN.

> Europe has many talented engineers and many founders who aim for "reasonable" success, but that's really not sufficient

Not under a US metropolitan HCOL existence, sure. For most in Europe, however, wealth-generation isn't the metric of success or human worth. Work-life balance is of significantly more importance than the higher-compensation/'at-will employment' trade-off.

If the SEC is a portal between private Finance and government, then AI is a portal between tech and government. It’s a way for money people of a certain tribe to legally funnel money between the government and private sector in full duplex (bi-directional. Government gives you money, you take money and make more money, use it to buy more politicians, who then “invest” more money into … you).

These governments are basically being co-opted.

It will come from others. 50 Billion is a deal made with the Saudis. Another 20 from a Canadian fund.

> So where is this magic money going to come from?

It's not a French government investment. It's coming from investment funds, Amazon, the UAE, data centre firms, etc.