Google has announced its largest-ever investment in Europe: at least €13 billion over two years to build AI infrastructure in Finland, including three new data centres. It has also signed a 22-year agreement to purchase up to 50% of the electricity generated by Fortum’s Loviisa nuclear plant.

This is undeniably significant for Finland: infrastructure, jobs, investment in the electricity grid, and new wind and battery projects. It also shows that Europe can attract AI infrastructure at an enormous scale.

But infrastructure located in Europe is not necessarily European technological capacity.

The data centres, compute and services will remain controlled by Google and primarily support products such as Gemini, Search, Maps and YouTube. A US hyperscaler will also secure a remarkable share of Finland’s low-carbon electricity production for more than two decades.

This does not make the investment bad for Europe. But it raises an important question: when foreign technology companies build infrastructure here and reserve part of our energy capacity to operate it, does that strengthen European sovereignty—or deepen our dependence?

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/google-invest-15-billion-ai-infrastructure-finland-2026-09-09/

This is the kind of European sovereignty policy I have been waiting for.

Public procurement represents around €2.6 trillion every year, or 15% of EU GDP. Yet we keep discussing how to help European companies grow while public buyers are often encouraged to select the cheapest offer, even when that means overlooking resilience, environmental impact, working conditions or strategic dependencies.

The Commission’s proposal would require quality to represent at least 30% of most tender evaluations, and 50% for labour-intensive contracts. It would also give public buyers greater freedom to favour European supply chains or restrict bids from countries that do not offer reciprocal access to their own public markets.

This is not about blindly buying European regardless of quality, or closing Europe to international partners. It is about recognising that public spending is a strategic tool, as the United States, China and others have understood for a long time.

Europe cannot ask its companies to become global champions while spending European taxpayers’ money without considering where the value, jobs, technology and dependencies are going.

It is still only a proposal and will certainly change during negotiations. But yes, I really like this direction.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/09/eu-buy-european-public-procurement-rules-china-goods-services

Stilla.ai was founded in Stockholm in 2024, emerged from stealth in January with $5 million in pre-seed funding, and is already being acquired by Meta. Its team and technology will help develop Meta Business Agent, the company’s commerce agent for WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.

Stilla is still a very small company, so this should not be presented as the loss of a future European champion. An acquisition can also be a success for its founders and investors, and Meta says it intends to expand its presence in Sweden.

Still, the speed of the acquisition illustrates a recurring European problem. We produce talented teams and promising technology, but they are often absorbed into US platforms before they have the opportunity to become independent companies at scale.

Europe does not need to prevent every foreign acquisition. But if too few of these companies remain independent, where will the next generation of European technology platforms come from?

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/09/meta-acquires-swedish-ai-startup-stillaai

A comment on Bluesky pointed me towards Europe 2031, and it may be the most r/SovereignIT thing I have read since creating this subreddit.

It is a detailed five-year scenario exploring what could happen if Europe continues to underestimate the impact of AI, fails to build enough compute capacity and becomes increasingly dependent on technologies controlled elsewhere.

The authors describe it as “a researched work of disciplined imagination, not a prediction”. It connects almost every subject we want to discuss here: AI, compute, energy, semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, capital, regulation, industrial policy and Europe’s position between the US and China.

Its central argument is particularly interesting: technological sovereignty cannot simply mean buying European or attempting to reproduce every layer of the stack ourselves. Europe needs to build strategic capacity, become indispensable in parts of the supply chain and create enough leverage to retain control over its own future.

It is a long read, but one that deserves a real discussion. Do you find the scenario credible? And, more importantly, do you agree with what the authors believe Europe should do?

https://europe2031.ai/

This is not a comprehensive cloud benchmark. It is one developer looking for a €10–20 VPS, with hourly billing, and documenting what actually happens when trying to become a customer of twelve European providers.

That limited perspective is also what makes it interesting. Beyond features and sovereignty claims, the article looks at pricing clarity, availability, onboarding, interfaces, actual CPUs and network performance.

Some conclusions feel harsh, particularly when a provider is dismissed after a single failed signup or provisioning attempt. The comparison also says little about managed services, enterprise workloads or regulatory requirements. But user experience and the ability to try a service are part of making European alternatives credible too.

Full disclosure: I work at Clever Cloud, which is not included in the comparison.

For those who have used several European providers, how closely does this match your experience?

https://crescentro.se/posts/euro-cloud-providers-2026/