Pie in the sky idea but one of the less obviously doomed (i.e., 1% chance of success, not 0%) paths to European AI relevance is going AI/crypto-maximalist.
Europe's two choices:
1. Euro-nationalism: Starting RIGHT NOW - invest $100B's into AI (taken from where?), effectively (somehow; how? - no idea!), while removing all the red tape that has always crippled its VC scene and economies of scale in IT. Fix in 2 years what it's been getting wrong for decades.
2. Maximally liberalize crypto, Euro stablecoin, stocks and RWA all go on chain. Flood a rich continent's worth of liquidity into the cryptosphere, throw a Hail Mary, and let its denizens work out a path to decentralized AGI. (Note: such a "utopian" project would actually get ideological defectors from USG that Euro-nationalism never would)
(2) has marginally higher chances of success than (1), as in, 1% vs. 0%.
But it's still 100% unrealistic. As it requires the EU to not be the EU. Perhaps if the EU was a continent sized Switzerland. But it isn't.
It's a US and China story. And will almost certainly remain that way to the end.
Europe attempting to develop its own frontier models is likely pointless. It doesn’t have the time to get the compute or start to catch up. A better play is to crate conditions to negotiate with America rather than simply capitulate to any American demands in the end