Two years.
That’s the narrow window Europe has to build its own artificial intelligence infrastructure before becoming permanently dependent on American tech giants, according to Arthur Mensch, the CEO of French AI startup Mistral.
“It will be decided in the next two years,” Mensch said during a Tuesday hearing on digital sovereignty and AI at France’s National Assembly, translated by Business Insider.
The 33-year-old cofounder of Mistral — one of Europe’s best-funded AI startups and a challenger to OpenAI — said that the continent risks losing control over not just AI models, but the energy and computing infrastructure powering them.
“Once supply is monopolized by American players, suddenly we no longer have supply and we can no longer transform electrons into tokens,” Mensch said, referring to the process of converting computing power into AI-generated output.
He even said that Europe could eventually become “a vassal state” if it fails to develop its own AI industry and continues importing digital services from the US.
Europe’s sovereignty push
Mensch has repeatedly touted sovereignty and Europe’s independence from American AI companies as central to Mistral’s open-source strategy, saying recently that governments increasingly want AI systems they can control independently of US tech giants.
The Paris-based startup has continued leaning into that message in recent announcements, including a partnership with Groupe Caisse des Dépôts, a state-backed French public investment institution, focused on strengthening Europe’s “digital sovereignty” through generative AI and GPU computing infrastructure.
On Tuesday, Mensch warned that the AI race is increasingly a battle over access to energy, chips, and data center capacity.
US tech companies are already moving aggressively to secure those resources, he said, adding that Europe risks falling behind permanently if it moves too slowly.
“The Americans are deploying a trillion dollars next year,” Mensch said. “The one who controls the chips, who controls the electrons, who has massive access to energy — that’s the one who wins.”
The infrastructure case
Mistral, which was founded in 2023 by former Meta and DeepMind researchers, has emerged as one of Europe’s flagship AI startups with a valuation of roughly $13.6 billion.
Mensch said the company aims to build a gigawatt of AI computing capacity by 2029, though he suggested Europe ultimately needs far more infrastructure investment.
The executive also criticized Europe’s fragmented regulations and capital markets, saying they make it far harder for startups to scale than in the US.
“If we don’t move fast enough,” Mensch said, “we’ll end up in a situation where we have no choice left.”
“In a world where you import all your digital services from the United States, you have no leverage over the United States,” he added.
