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Can Europe Break American Dominance Without Copying Silicon Valley?

The United States is currently the clear favorite in the global competition for artificial intelligence. It has the leading cloud platforms, several of the most powerful general-purpose AI models, large capital markets, and a superior ability to disseminate new technologies through existing software, advertising, and operating-system platforms. According to the Stanford AI Index, private AI investment in the US was about 23 times higher than in China in 2025; in generative AI, American investment significantly exceeded the combined investment of China and Europe. However, this does not mean that American companies will necessarily control all the economic and social value creation generated by artificial intelligence. The development of a foundation model, the operation of data centers, integration into businesses, and application in industry, medicine, energy, government, or science represent different markets with different conditions for success. Accordingly, the OECD describes the AI market as combining substantial concentration in computing power, data, and distribution with continued high dynamism among models, providers, and applications. The historical example of Airbus shows that Europe can break an existing American dominance in a capital-intensive high-technology industry. Airbus did not displace Boeing, but it transformed an American-dominated market into a global duopoly. In 2025, Airbus delivered 793 commercial aircraft and ended the year with a record order backlog of 8.754 aircraft. This success was not based solely on supposedly higher European quality. Airbus pooled national capabilities, received long-term public support, secured committed launch customers, and evolved from a loose consortium into an integrated company under unified leadership. Boeing, meanwhile, suffered from documented problems in manufacturing, documentation, oversight, and quality management. The US National Transportation Safety Board attributed the Boeing 737 MAX 9 door-plug incident to inadequate training, guidance, and oversight by Boeing. The US aviation regulator FAA also identified numerous violations of quality requirements. Nevertheless, the Airbus experience cannot be transferred unchanged to AI. Aircraft have product cycles spanning decades, clearly defined certification procedures, and very high switching costs. AI models can lose competitiveness in relative terms within a matter of months. A politically constructed, unified European corporation would therefore probably be too slow. Europe instead needs an AI industrial system based on the Airbus principle: shared computing, energy, and data infrastructure, at least one capable European foundation-model provider, open and interchangeable model alternatives, specialized companies such as DeepL, industrial launch customers, strategic public procurement, European growth capital, and independent safety and testing institutions. Such a system would be socially beneficial only if it met three additional conditions: it must augment human capabilities rather than merely replace staff; public funding must be tied to a public return; and manufacturers must not also be the sole assessors of their own systems. Europe will probably not overtake the US in global cloud platforms, consumer assistants, or the absolute amount of computing power. But it could attain leading positions in industrial reliability, multilingual business processes, regulated applications, controllable deployment, and the integration of AI into real-world production systems. The opportunity is real. But it will not arise automatically from Europe’s industrial past. It must be organized politically, economically, and institutionally.