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European AI. A playbook to own it

europe.mistral.ai

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Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#81

Post by shimman »

enejej wrote: post #60
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just startups or funding. Google alone has more AI compute than China and the EU combined. There's no shortage of capital in Europe. But nobody wants to take the risk. Meanwhile in the US, people are putting 10-100x the capital at risk. So you can say what you want about it looking scary to you to invest in the US, but the people with capital to invest clearly don't see it that way. More often when you hear VCs g…

I’m not all that convinced on the regulation part. Ultimately it’s all about investing money to create real assets that generate cash flows. One can side step regulations to some extent whilst developing a product (nobody cares/notices until you are actually growing fast) and then deal with regulations later. Uber already showed this and the leading AI firms are following the same act - having ripped off a lot of con…

Yes, let's ignore regulations that provide people with stable jobs, societies, and countries. Afterall what good is democracy when the alternative is making more money?

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#82

Post by kjellsbells »

miohtama wrote: post #75
jamesblonde wrote: post #63

I lead a European owned and operated Data/AI company, Hopsworks. We are the only competitor to Databricks/Snowflake/etc based-in and from Europe. We can still compete, as we have a deep research/industry background (ex-MySQL and KTH folks). Crossing the chasm is harder from here. Even if you build a great product (we are best at real-time AI) - we had a paper at SIGMOD 2024 where we showed higher thoughput/lower late…

There cannot be echo chamber as long as entrepreneurship is not seen as generally acceptable in European culture

I hate that I agree, and yet, I agree. The EU has a giant single market, has a pipeline of elite tech talent from everywhere from Finland in the North on down, has long since settled on English as the lingua franca of business but has plenty of tools to solve i18n, and yet...culturally is just hostile to entrepreneurship in a way that goes beyond reasonable suspicion of fakery. what's that all about?

I don't think it's regulation, btw. Starting and running my company in the UK pre Brexit was way easier than doing it in the US. Keeping the IRS happy is no joke.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#83

Post by enejej »

shimman wrote: post #81
enejej wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not all that convinced on the regulation part. Ultimately it’s all about investing money to create real assets that generate cash flows. One can side step regulations to some extent whilst developing a product (nobody cares/notices until you are actually growing fast) and then deal with regulations later. Uber already showed this and the leading AI firms are following the same act - having ripped off a lot of con…

Yes, let's ignore regulations that provide people with stable jobs, societies, and countries. Afterall what good is democracy when the alternative is making more money?

[flagged]

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#84

Post by abletonlive »

shimman wrote: post #80
miohtama wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There cannot be echo chamber as long as entrepreneurship is not seen as generally acceptable in European culture

Looking at the US culture, it's not hard to see entrepreneurship as a societal disease. Let's not act like "entrepreneurship" is necessary at all to develop technology. Western governments simply have no ability to find their own destination as any attempt to get off the US big tech ramp comes with threats to destroy defense treaties, weapons contracts, and tariffs with their major ally. Hardly anything to do with "e…

> Looking at the US culture, it's not hard to see entrepreneurship as a societal disease.

It's easy if you're in some nihilistic and cynical echochamber like reddit. For everybody else, entrepreneurship is still quite celebrated and seen as a positive for society.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#85

Post by [deleted] »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #55
zmmmmm wrote: post #49

The glaring number to me is only 5% of VC funds vs 52% in the US. That's 10x more opportunity despite roughly comparable economies. As long as that is true, it seems like it will always be impossible to get an organic startup industry working in the EU. Any startup that is any good will almost certainly end up getting a round of investment from the US and most likely move their base of operations there. I wonder if r…

Not just startups or funding. Google alone has more AI compute than China and the EU combined. There's no shortage of capital in Europe. But nobody wants to take the risk. Meanwhile in the US, people are putting 10-100x the capital at risk. So you can say what you want about it looking scary to you to invest in the US, but the people with capital to invest clearly don't see it that way. More often when you hear VCs g…

[deleted]

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#86

Post by abletonlive »

kitbrennan wrote: post #72
enejej wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funding allocation is a reflection of different cultures really. I’m from the UK but there’s no way there’s the same density, drive, and hunger to take risk, to the extent that you find in US. Also there’s a lot more synergy in the US vs a fragmented Europe.

I’m also from the UK and I think this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a UK founder that has raised in the UK, I have seen our US competitors raise substantially more with substantially less traction, so in future I’m significantly more tempted to look across the pond for raising. It has little to do with my culture vs theirs, and all to do with where the opportunity sits. Many of the other founders I know with the…

> It has little to do with my culture vs theirs, and all to do with where the opportunity sits.

So it does have to do with culture. The US has better culture for starting a business. You can't just divorce the opportunity that came from the culture just to make a point.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#87

Post by abletonlive »

martin-t wrote: post #41
sva_ wrote: post #29

There's this sentiment in Germany that if you can't make in industry, you work for the government or - even worse - become a politician. It seems like Mistral took that to the next level; they can't compete so they do lobbying instead. Being European, I love the idea of European AI labs. But I wish there was more competition. That being said, as a German for example, I can't think of an AI company successfully traini…

In that case, hopefully the copyright mafia will take the money from US and Chinese LLM companies and redistribute it to the people who did the actual work fueling the models, such as myself. I did not spend 10 years writing (A)GPL code for all of it to be stripped of its license, remixed and sold for profit. Of course in a truly just world, the LLM companies who took my code without permission would beg with offers…

> LLM companies and redistribute it to the people who did the actual work fueling the models, such as myself.

Okay this is a new level of narcissism and gatekeeping, thanks for the laugh.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#89

Post by peyton »

enejej wrote: post #60
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just startups or funding. Google alone has more AI compute than China and the EU combined. There's no shortage of capital in Europe. But nobody wants to take the risk. Meanwhile in the US, people are putting 10-100x the capital at risk. So you can say what you want about it looking scary to you to invest in the US, but the people with capital to invest clearly don't see it that way. More often when you hear VCs g…

I’m not all that convinced on the regulation part. Ultimately it’s all about investing money to create real assets that generate cash flows. One can side step regulations to some extent whilst developing a product (nobody cares/notices until you are actually growing fast) and then deal with regulations later. Uber already showed this and the leading AI firms are following the same act - having ripped off a lot of con…

Makes sense. You’re saying why would regulations matter when clearly they can just be ignored.

For venture ultimately it’s a soulless moneyman’s game. Really they have to pick winners, and anybody can look at the landscape and see there’s just not gonna be a Pierre Zuckerberg or a Klaus Kalanick. And if there ever is, he’ll need to raise lots of money anyway, which would come from venture.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#90

Post by chinabot »

shimman wrote: post #80
miohtama wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There cannot be echo chamber as long as entrepreneurship is not seen as generally acceptable in European culture

Looking at the US culture, it's not hard to see entrepreneurship as a societal disease. Let's not act like "entrepreneurship" is necessary at all to develop technology. Western governments simply have no ability to find their own destination as any attempt to get off the US big tech ramp comes with threats to destroy defense treaties, weapons contracts, and tariffs with their major ally. Hardly anything to do with "e…

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