The race to dominate AI infrastructure means Europe is chasing the US, while the continent has gained global leadership in AI apps.
It was the verdict of the Dutch technical leaders in Parliament, a policy track exclusively for the TNW conference in Amsterdam.
Silicon Valley controls AI footing, but they have urged Europe to focus on building apps.
Leading the call, CM.com CEO and founder Jeroen Van Glabbeek, is a customer engagement platform with a market capitalization of approximately 217 million euros and annual revenues of 274 million euros in 2024.
Van Glabbeek believes that the US benefits in AI infrastructure could be the Launchpad of European software. “The infrastructure is already there,” he said.
That infrastructure is built with unprecedented investments. In 2025 alone, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft plan to combine more than $300 million (EUR 261 billion) with AI data centers, networking and cloud services, according to CNBC.
Van Grubbeek called it “the greatest investment in technology in human history.”
High-tech companies in Europe cannot match the scale of their spending on hardware. However, they can be capitalized by building AI apps on a foundation placed in the US.
Europe already has a strong record of building top-notch apps, from Spotify and Grammarly to Revolut and Klarna. In the AI era, Van Grubbeek envisions a new wave coming out of the region.
“We won't win Hyper Scholar AI Platform Play, but we still have positive things to compete. It's on the application side,” he said.
The emotion was echoed by other tech leaders on stage.
Sohrab Hosseini, co-founder of Amsterdam-based generation AI startup Orq.ai, highlighted the “orchestration and application-level” opportunities, while Lucien Burm, president of the Dutch Startup Association, pointed out where the profits lie.
“Money should probably be made in the application layer,” he said. “We're not going to win that much with very deep AI hardware technology.”
To meet the possibilities of European AI, speakers sought financial changes for the trio. Risk appetite from investors has increased, there is less deficit on public funding, and more local funding. But their most pressing demands are innovation-friendly regulations, which echo in the continent's high-tech sector.
