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Comment by dlkf | Hacker News Reader

> OVH and BT for example. Both of which predate AWS and GCP.

How is this not an own goal? These companies had a head start and they still lost. Not by a little, but by such a staggering margin that AWS does two OOMs more revenue.

> I literally just said I work for an AI tech company in Europe.

The argument is not ”there are no AI companies in Europe.” The argument is ”there are no competitive AI companies in Europe.” The only one I can think of is DeepMind, and they are A) English (no longer EU) and B) were acquired by Google ten years ago.

What are these European tech companies that are competitive with Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, etc? I’d like to learn more.

> You do realise that London, Berlin and other European tech hubs have their fair share of talented engineers who have moved to that country for work too?

A lot of them work for subsidiaries of American companies.

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> How is this not an own goal? These companies had a head start and they still lost.

They’re hugely successful corporations. Saying they’ve “lost” is a tad ridiculous.

Plus monopolies are bad for innovation so you could argue that Europe has a healthier ecosystem because it is tougher on monopolies than America.

> The argument is not ”there are no AI companies in Europe.” The argument is ”there are no competitive AI companies in Europe.”

You phrase that like it was a quote but in fact it wasn’t. The point being argued was that AI start ups couldn’t exist and I demonstrated they could.

Europe is also a hotspot of AI research:

https://odsc.medium.com/top-ten-european-ai-research-labs-fo...

> The only one I can think of is DeepMind, and they are A) English (no longer EU) and B) were acquired by Google ten years ago.

England was in the EU 10 years ago, EU legislations were carried over to English law after “Brexit” and the fact that they were good enough to be bought by Google also demonstrates that European companies can be seen as a threat.

> A lot of them work for subsidiaries of American companies.

And a lot of them don’t. I had my worked for a single American subsidiary in my 20 years of experience in Europe. Same is true for a lot of my friends too.

I really do get fed up with how some Americans believe it’s impossible that any other country could be successful.

> They’re hugely successful corporations. Saying they’ve “lost” is a tad ridiculous.

Let’s quantify it so it’s not ridiculous. Since getting their head start, they have ”lost” about 90% of total market share to American companies who are doing a better job. And this is before the new transfer framework that cane out this month. What is the value prop of OVH without regulatory capture?

> Europe is also a hotspot of AI research

This is absolutely true. Amsterdam for example produces outstanding ML research. But where do their freshly minted phds go? American companies!

> I really do get fed up with how some Americans believe it’s impossible that any other country could be successful.

For what it’s worth, I live in northern Europe. As you point out, European universities are great. They are an AI research hotbed and they produce highly capable undergrads. But this clearly isn’t translating into world class tech companies, and we should ask ourselves why.

> Let’s quantify it so it’s not ridiculous. Since getting their head start, they have ”lost” about 90% of total market share to American companies who are doing a better job. And this is before the new transfer framework that cane out this month. What is the value prop of OVH without regulatory capture?

This is a different argument to the one originally pitched though. And you cannot just assume the reason OVH hadn’t exploded like AWS did was due to EU regulation.

> But where do their freshly minted phds go? American companies

Again, I work for a European AI tech firm.

> But this clearly isn’t translating into world class tech companies, and we should ask ourselves why.

I think it is. I just think European tech firms are generally happier to grow organically. I think it’s more a case of different cultures. America is all about growth above all else. Whereas Europe is often more about user experience. European firms are often less aggressive at advertising outside of Europe too (maybe that’s a language barrier?)

I do honestly think the European tech market is healthy. It’s just different to the US market. The problem is the American school of capitalism is all about market dominance whereas European companies seem a little less obsessed with that. But that doesn’t mean Europe isn’t doing some exceedingly good work.

As a European, I value the fact that we have such a vibrant ecosystem.

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