By Dipl.-Ing., Dipl.Wirt.-Ing.(FH) Kurt B. König, Frankfurt/GERMANY; 12. January 2026
Finally, Europe has discovered the importance of competitiveness and the need of support policies to strengthen their competitiveness .
For industrialized countries/regions the focus is on fields in new/high tech:
• A.I.
• Cloud technology
• Quantum technologies
• Nuclear Fusion
• Space technologies
• Autonomous driving
• Precision medicine
• Technologies in favour of renewable energies
Any major region should be amongst the leaders at least in some of those fields.
This short paper maintains that Europe will not succeed in being/becoming competitive in major new/high tech fields.
Although we are discussing a complex and multifaceted topic here, this article sets out a simple two-part reason why it is impossible for Europe to become competitive in these fields.
In other words, for that very claim – Europe will not succeed in being/becoming competitive in major new/high tech fields – there is no further reason to discuss other factors, but the one invoked in this paper.
To substantiate this claim, let us consider A.I-technology.
Only the US and China are in the race
It is evident, that these two regions are the leaders in major new/high tech.
This is very apparent in the field of A.I. and cloud technology. Europe is way beyond the U.S. and China in this field and will not be able catch up.
A two-part reason
There is a two-parted reason why that is so. It is the combination of these two aspects which is required to be/become successful.
The two aspects are:
• Investment-size
• Investment-time.
Let us have a look to the U.S. and to China
The U.S.
OpenAI’s work on large language models began in 2015–2016, 10 years ago.
Recent reports indicates that the cumulative investment in the training alone is now well above $15–20 billion.
The 10‑year cloud‑infrastructure total cost, is estimated to a cumulative investment above $20–30 billion,
Fresh reporting shows OpenAI now generates around $10–12 billion in annualized revenue.
In other words, it took them 10 years to make an overall benefit on operations, if at all.
China
Becoming the leader in A.I.-technologies is a clear objective set by the political leadership of China.
China’s A.I. spending over the past 10 years is best estimated to hundreds of billions of dollars, based on the annual investment levels visible in the latest data.
What the U.S. and China have in common and Europe is missing
For different reasons in both the U.S. and China there is the ability/willingness to invest very large amounts of money over long periods of time (e.g. 10 years) before a return on investment.
In the U.S. the investment comes from the private sector. Entrepreneurs take the risk to sustain large investments over long periods.
In China, this is a matter of government policy. State-controlled companies are enabled to make such long-term, high investments.
In Europe there is no actor which is able/willing to put up very large amounts of investment over such long periods. No actor in Europe has the breath to sustain heavy investments over 10 years.
On top, there is “no Europe” in this field where actors from different countries would join forces.
Let us mention Germany and France.
Germany has a very sound technological knowledge base on A.I. and quite a number A.I. initiatives. But they are scattered over the Länder, which makes it even worse.
France has some very good A.I. companies (e.g. Mistral AI) and President Macron launched a European summit on A.I. However, to date, no joint projects of any significant size have been launched.
CONCLUSION
For a region to become competitive in major new/high tech fields it needs to maintain very large amounts of investment over a long period before return on investment can be expected.
Europe is unable/not willing to sustain very large investments in major new technologies.
Hence, Europe will not be able to catch up with the U.S. and China. This may well be true for other high-tech fields, as for example nuclear fusion or space technologies.
In Germany/Europe we have now the discussion whether Germany should invest into the developments of a LLM.
Key players (e.g. Christian Klein, SAP) suggest focusing on applications, particularly for industry.
With a view to the dependency of Europe in A.I-technologies from the U.S. and China, the author much rather likes to support the view of Yoshua Bengio, Université de Montréal, who would consider it a big mistake if Europe were to rely solely on top models from US and Chinese suppliers.
Future
For the period 2025 – 2035 OpenAI is now committing to $1.15 trillion in cloud and hardware spending.
If Europe does not join forces, Europe will be left even further behind.