Austria has formally lobbied the European Union to consider hosting Anthropic in the region. The move was prompted by recent U.S. government regulations that cut off foreign access to the company’s cutting-edge AI models.
It has been suggested that the European Union should consider hosting Anthropic in the region to counter US efforts to prevent foreigners from using AI companies’ cutting-edge models.
In a letter published by the Austrian government to EU technical commissioner Henna Virkunen, Austria’s state secretary for digitalization, Alexander Proel, said it was important that Europe not be cut off from key innovations.
“Let us jointly explore the strategic establishment and participation of Anthropic within the European Union, with legal certainty, market access, capital and a set of values suitable for this company,” Proel said in the letter.
He did not say how that step would be taken, but acknowledged there was skepticism about whether it would be possible.
“The real question is not whether it is easy,” Proel wrote. “The question is: Are we Europeans ready to be the architects of our technological future, or do we want to remain mere custodians of decisions made in other countries?”
Earlier this month, the European Commission proposed legislation to boost domestic cloud, AI and semiconductor industries and reduce America’s dependence on Big Tech, ignoring US government criticism of the European Union’s crackdown on the industry.
The US Department of Commerce’s recent move to restrict access to Anthropic’s frontier models “Fable 5 and Mythos 5” has sparked a significant geopolitical debate about “AI sovereignty.”
In response to the sudden global power outage, Austria’s state secretary for digitalization, Alexander Proel, formally asked the European Union to consider hosting Anthropic in the region.
