Donald Trump returned to the White House promising tariffs, equity stakes in key industries and a hard line on technology exports. His approach has rattled boardrooms from Paris to Berlin. Yet one message cuts through the uncertainty. Europe must think larger. Dream bigger. Act faster.
Maurice Lévy’s Blunt Warning
Publicis Groupe chairman Maurice Lévy delivered that message with characteristic directness at VivaTech this month. Speaking to Reuters, he called on France and Germany to anchor a €100 billion pan-European artificial intelligence fund. The trigger? U.S. export controls on models from Anthropic that suddenly left European companies without access to frontier tools. “It has not been well received,” Lévy said. “To put it mildly.”
His proposal isn’t abstract policy talk. It addresses a concrete vulnerability. Banks, manufacturers and startups had built operations around American AI services. Then the switch flipped. Access vanished overnight. For executives running critical systems, the experience felt like having the nervous system of their business cut off without warning. Lévy argues continued dependence on foreign providers threatens competitiveness and, in some cases, survival.
The timing lands with force. Fortune published its latest package on European innovation the same week VivaTech marked its tenth anniversary. In that piece, Lévy told Kamal Ahmed the continent should seize the moment to “voir plus grand.” Think bigger. The phrase echoes across conversations in Paris this June. And it frames a new edition of Fortune’s ranking of Europe’s Most Innovative Companies.
But lists alone won’t close the gap. Real progress demands capital, infrastructure and a willingness to back ambitious projects at scale. That’s where stories like Nscale come in. And where talent strategies at firms such as Spotify and King, the maker of Candy Crush Saga, reveal quieter strengths.
Nscale barely existed three years ago. Born as a spinout from crypto-mining operations tied to Arkon Energy in 2024, the U.K.-based company has raised roughly $4 billion including a $2 billion Series C that valued it at $14.6 billion earlier this year. NVIDIA backed the round. So did a roster of heavyweights. Sheryl Sandberg, former Meta COO, joined the board along with Nick Clegg and Susan Decker. Sandberg later described founder Chris Payne’s vision in stark terms. “The only person I’d ever seen write like that was Mark,” she said, referencing Zuckerberg.
Payne keeps the focus practical. “Every dollar is backed by real revenues,” he told Fortune reporter Beatrice Nolan in her June 3 profile. The company builds AI infrastructure across Europe and beyond. Data centers in Norway draw on abundant renewable power. Projects stretch to Portugal, the U.K., Iceland and the United States. GPU-backed loans totaling $1.4 billion and a separate $790 million facility for Norway underscore the financial muscle. Nscale positions itself as a neocloud player delivering the compute backbone for enterprise AI training, fine-tuning and inference.
Its rise highlights Europe’s potential in the hardware layer of artificial intelligence. Yet challenges remain. Some Stargate-related projects have faced delays. Construction timelines slip. The hype around massive valuations must translate into reliable, production-grade systems. Still, the speed of capital formation stands out. Few European startups have moved this quickly from niche origins to hyperscale ambitions.
Success at the infrastructure level matters. So does the ability to attract and retain exceptional people. Spotify’s chief human resources officer has spent recent years overhauling recruitment and workplace culture precisely to win what she calls the talent war. Her approach mixes data-driven hiring with a deliberate emphasis on creative freedom and long-term career paths. The streaming giant competes against Big Tech giants with deeper pockets. Its edge comes from European roots, a distinctive product focus and policies that keep engineers engaged beyond salary alone.
Over at King, the executive responsible for Candy Crush Saga faces a different puzzle. The match-three game remains one of the planet’s most popular titles years after launch. Longevity in consumer apps demands constant creativity. In an era of generative AI tools, that means knowing when to automate routine tasks and when to protect the human spark that produces surprise and delight. Kamal Ahmed’s conversation with her at VivaTech explored exactly those tensions. How do you scale creativity while embracing new technology? The answers matter far beyond mobile gaming. They speak to broader questions about European firms preserving distinct cultural advantages in a homogenized tech world.
These examples don’t exist in isolation. Fortune’s innovation ranking spotlights companies in telecom infrastructure, industrial automation and health care. Areas where Europe has built genuine depth. Yet the overarching narrative feels urgent. U.S. policy under Trump amplifies the pressure. Tariffs. Investment screening. Export restrictions on advanced models. Each move nudges European leaders to reduce reliance on American platforms.
Lévy’s fund idea aims to change the math. A coordinated €100 billion vehicle led by Paris and Berlin could accelerate homegrown AI development. It would fund compute resources, talent programs and applied research without forcing every country to build everything alone. Critics may call the sum ambitious. Given the sums already committed by U.S. hyperscalers and the strategic stakes, hesitation carries greater risk.
Recent signals reinforce the point. Bloomberg reported on Lévy’s VivaTech comments about Anthropic controls unsettling European CEOs. Discussions at the conference turned repeatedly to sovereignty. Not as protectionism for its own sake. But as a practical requirement for companies that cannot afford sudden service cutoffs in core operations.
So what does thinking bigger actually require? Capital at a scale that matches the problem. Infrastructure built for AI workloads rather than retrofitted. Talent strategies that compete on mission and culture, not just compensation. And policy coordination that treats technology as a strategic asset instead of a regulatory target.
Nscale’s trajectory offers one model. Rapid fundraising. Strategic partnerships with NVIDIA and others. A focus on real revenue and delivered capacity. Spotify and King demonstrate that established European players can evolve their internal practices to stay competitive. The innovation ranking celebrates many more such efforts.
Yet the gap with U.S. spending remains vast. Trump’s mix of tariffs and selective government investment in domestic champions such as Intel sends a clear signal. America intends to dominate key technologies. Europe’s response cannot be defensive regulation alone. It must include aggressive investment and a cultural shift toward larger ambitions.
Lévy put it plainly. Europe is determined to compete on its own terms in the defining innovation race of this century. Whatever signals come from Washington. The coming months at events like VivaTech will test whether that determination produces concrete action. Or remains an aspiration.
The stakes have rarely been higher. Companies that master AI infrastructure, talent systems and creative processes will shape industries for decades. Europe possesses the research base, the engineering talent and the regulatory experience to carve out a distinct path. But only if it chooses to dream bigger. Starting now.
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