2 years.
According to Arthur Mensch, CEO of French AI startup Mistral, this is a narrow window in which Europe must build its own artificial intelligence infrastructure before becoming permanently dependent on American tech giants.
“It will be decided within the next two years,” Mensch said during Tuesday’s hearing on digital sovereignty and AI in the French National Assembly, as translated by Business Insider.
The 33-year-old co-founder of Mistral, one of Europe’s best-funded AI startups and challenger to OpenAI, said the continent risks losing control not only of its AI models but also of the energy and computing infrastructure that power them.
“Once the supply is monopolized by the American players, all of a sudden there is no supply and you can’t convert electrons into tokens,” Mensch said, referring to the process of converting computing power into AI-generated output.
He even said that Europe could end up becoming a “vassal state” if it fails to develop its own AI industry and continues to import digital services from the United States.
European sovereignty claims
Mensch has repeatedly touted sovereignty and Europe’s independence from U.S. AI companies as central to Mistral’s open source strategy, recently saying that governments increasingly want AI systems that they can control independently of U.S. tech giants.
The Paris-based startup continues to lean into that message with recent announcements, including a partnership with Groupe Caisse des Depôts, a government-backed French public investment agency focused on strengthening Europe’s “digital sovereignty” through generative AI and GPU computing infrastructure.
Mensch warned on Tuesday that the AI race is increasingly a fight over access to energy, chips and data center capacity.
He said U.S. tech companies were already moving aggressively to secure these resources, adding that Europe risked falling permanently behind if it moved too slowly.
“America is going to spend $1 trillion next year,” Mensch said. “Whoever controls the chips, who controls the electrons, who has access to the bulk of the energy, that’s the winner.”
Infrastructure case
Founded in 2023 by former Meta and DeepMind researchers, Mistral has emerged as one of Europe’s leading AI startups with a valuation of approximately $13.6 billion.
Mensch said the company aims to build gigawatts of AI computing capacity by 2029, but suggested Europe will ultimately need more infrastructure investment.
The executive also criticized Europe’s fragmented regulations and capital markets, saying they make it much more difficult for startups to scale than in the United States.
“If we don’t act quickly enough, we’re going to find ourselves in a situation where we have no options left,” Mensch said.
“In a world where all digital services are imported from the United States, there is no leverage over the United States,” he added.