Niklas Zennström, one of Europe’s most successful tech entrepreneurs and investors, believes the continent’s start-ups can still succeed in artificial intelligence despite their huge funding gap with US rivals. European start-ups can thrive by developing applications that are built on top of AI platforms run by US-based companies such as OpenAI or Google, Zennström told the Financial Times. “Think what happened with mobile and the cloud: there are a few cloud providers in the world, they enable thousands and thousands of businesses,” he said in an interview. “It’s not like everyone needs to be a large language model . . . You can create value as an application provider.” The comments from a leading industry voice come as European policymakers and investors grow anxious that the US is pulling ahead of the region in AI. Many worry that Europe once again risks being left behind by deep-pocketed groups in Silicon Valley in a transformational new technology, with huge implications for the region’s competitiveness and national security. The European tech industry has created hundreds of “unicorns” — private companies valued at more than $1bn — and narrowed the gap in early-stage funding with the US “regardless of whether Europe has a lot of critical [tech] infrastructure that is European”, the Skype co-founder told the FT.

Full report : Skype and Atomico founder Niklas Zennström says European startups can thrive by developing apps for US-based AI platforms and believes pessimism about European startups is exaggerated.