Europe doesn't have any behemoths that are younger than 40+ years but every behemoth that Europe has was once a start-up too in the distant past: Novo Nordisk, ASML, Airbus, Bosch, Siemens, VW, Nestle, etc. How do people forget this?

Behemoths are important because only they have the massive R&D budgets to experiment on new and risky ventures, but also have the economies of scale to built massively expensive and complex things like rockets, hyperscalers, etc.

You can't have a powerful growing and internationally competitive economy just with "Mittelstand" mom & pop shops making niche knick-knacks, you also need behemoths. Why else do you think the German military is contracting Google to build them an on-prem cloud and not a German company?[1] Because Germany, like all of Europe, has no SW behemoths that can do the thigs Google can do at that cost and scale. That's why behemoths are important.

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bundeswehr-relies-on-Google-Clo...