131–140 of 192 posts
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Zoom in Veldhoven and then try to see the equivalent of ASML anywhere else.
This is not the flex it could be. As far as I know ASML licensed their core tech from US research. Which is why they can dictate who ASML sells to.
I don’t understand why Mistral gets so little recognition. They consistently have a top model on benchmarks such as LiveBench and their models are open source. Hugging Face is French, Black Forrest Labs (Stable Diffusion) is German, Weaviate is Dutch, Hetzner for IaasS. There’s AI here. Maybe hardware production is the bigger problem?
Iirc: mistral has American investors, black forest labs hq has been moved to silicon valley.
And Black Forest labs is still headquartered in Freiburg, Germany. They just have a lab in SF.
I briefly went thought the list - a lot of hosted systems (probably kubernetes underneath etc). This is not unique or anything. The list is quite sus ;) did you know that cockroachdb is a German company? :) it’s in the list. And this is like 3rd company in the category that I was checking https://eutechmap.com/company/cockroachdb —— On more sad note. Europe still loves their old money, (hidden) class system and deepl…
It’s ludicrous to pretend important ideas only come from the US and China.
I don’t understand why Mistral gets so little recognition. They consistently have a top model on benchmarks such as LiveBench and their models are open source. Hugging Face is French, Black Forrest Labs (Stable Diffusion) is German, Weaviate is Dutch, Hetzner for IaasS. There’s AI here. Maybe hardware production is the bigger problem?
They’re 5th off bottom on livebench https://livebench.ai/
I don’t understand why Mistral gets so little recognition. They consistently have a top model on benchmarks such as LiveBench and their models are open source. Hugging Face is French, Black Forrest Labs (Stable Diffusion) is German, Weaviate is Dutch, Hetzner for IaasS. There’s AI here. Maybe hardware production is the bigger problem?
Iirc: mistral has American investors, black forest labs hq has been moved to silicon valley.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iirc: mistral has American investors, black forest labs hq has been moved to silicon valley.
That's why the European way to tech sovereignty is (publicly-funded) free software. Cannot be bought by unlimited VC money from The Valley, and it benefits the rest of the world, which is a tiny drop, and hence a necessary one, in Europe offsetting the damages of colonization, past and present.
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Cyberspace promised us we can all work together to create things, like one species coming together to solve problems. Now in 2026, we need to “space” for every little tribe…
It was in no position to make such promises.
For example: suing Nappster 2 years after it launched. And that was just because it was an extremely clear-cut case. By the time they did that there were 10 such networks, none of which were sued, none of which had clear laws or court decisions stating clearly one way or the other if it was legal.
And when we're talking a vague issue, for example how copyright affects search engines, the first actually settled case (which was still a far cry from establishing the rules) happened in 2006, 16 years after the initial search engine started operating and over 8 years after Google started it's meteoric rise. The specific decision the courts deigned to make, after 16 years? That caching a page so it can be used to build a search index in the first place does not by itself violate copyright. Great, well, that covers it then. My point is, by then the cat was out of the bag, ran to the neighbors house, got 6 kittens, who each got 6 kittens themselves and one of it's grandchildren ate the sandwich the judge was hoping to have for lunch and one of the other kittens got adopted by the president of the US, while the rest invaded and destroyed the houses of publishers that tried to protect their copyright.
Imagine the insanity, the damage that any real court decision against search engines would do today. "No you can't show previews". "Ads don't respect trademarks". There is no room for any such decisions now. The few decisions they have made (in >30 years) have amplified the damage to the victims that the court system tried to help (just ask a few newspapers).
Of course, none of this has instilled any sense of reasonableness, modesty or urgency in any parliament, court or even executive around the globe. For instance, they could PRE-clarify the laws before AI takes over 5 industries. Does AI training violate copyright? What are the rights of an employee that gets fired because AI does their job? No government felt the need to answer the copyright question when it mattered, 7 years ago, and there is ZERO action on the second question. Are they planning to answer the people displacement question once 99% of companies have done it because competition forced them to?
Now any answer they give on the copyright front is beside the point since no court or Parliament actually has the power to order existing (potentially law-violating) models to be destroyed. Once again, they have placed themselves into a position where they are totally irrelevant. Now one might ask, the time is to decide if you violate copyright by training a model using a model that was trained while violating copyright. Perhaps that one is still relevant. But nothing will be done.
And please, it doesn't matter what your position is on the issue. Can model training violate copyright? Yes or no? We live in a democracy and no decision is made. This is an important part of why big companies get to openly violate laws on an unprecedented scale for billions and billions without consequences while kids sometimes get locked up for stealing a single candy.
Peak EU mindset thinking all we need is a nifty little map application to find alternatives. Meanwhile, tech companies are continuing to bail into the US the moment they reach significant revenue due to crushing tax and labour costs (see e.g. Oura announcing their departure from Finland yesterday) Unfortunately the EU and many local governments have chosen to double down on crippling socialism (presumedly to "own Tru…
> labour costs Where in the EU is a software engineer paid SV FAANG rates? > Oura announcing their departure from Finland yesterday The article I read said they were moving their HQ domicile to Delaware in preparation for a US stock market listing. A bit like US companies do. It said firmly that roughly half of its staff were already in the US, half in Finland, and that wasn't going to change.
Maybe Switzerland but regardless I agree - it is the labour cost that _attracted_ US companies to plant their labs across Europe and not vice versa.
I briefly went thought the list - a lot of hosted systems (probably kubernetes underneath etc). This is not unique or anything. The list is quite sus ;) did you know that cockroachdb is a German company? :) it’s in the list. And this is like 3rd company in the category that I was checking https://eutechmap.com/company/cockroachdb —— On more sad note. Europe still loves their old money, (hidden) class system and deepl…
Asml is a European company. Arm (was) a European company. Novo Nordisk is a European company. It’s ludicrous to pretend important ideas only come from the US and China.
Yes we're not that good at creating mega-businesses. And when we manage, said businesses quickly run to the US.
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That is false. You can absolutely found a company by just getting an entry as a merchant here with neither of the things you listed. If you want to found a limited liability company though, then yes, you need some monetary backing to cover for fuckups (likely the 25k are not fully covering it anyway) and a notary to make it official.
No, you CANNOT found a company like that. It’s an absolute fabrication. You also seem to somehow justify spending 25k on an endeavor you don’t know will succeed upfront, when every other country on the planet allows you to open one with orders of magnitude smaller amounts of capital. You can open a UK LTD in a few days with 12GBP. Similar in DK/NL/CZ… the list goes on. I’ve learned firsthand that germans will bend ov…
I'm a German. I have done this myself. I assure you it's true.
> You also seem to somehow justify spending 25k on an endeavor you don’t know will succeed upfront, when every other country on the planet allows you to open one with orders of magnitude smaller amounts of capital.
If you are planning a serious endeavour where you intend to limit your liability, you'll have a business plan. And that allows multiple options, from a bank loan of a local bank that will very likely be granted on good conditions, to one of the various municipal, regional, or federal programs that offer grants for newly founded companies. My current company secured 200k Euro at the beginning from a federal program that we did not have to pay back, for example.