/Tech1h ago

Europe 2031 initiative warns three individual US AI labs each control more compute than all of Europe combined

Story Overview

The Europe 2031 narrative project lays out a scenario where three separate US AI labs already command more compute capacity than the entire continent combined, including UK sites and US-run facilities in Europe. Backed by MIT's Michiel Bakker, the five-year speculative story uses visuals and characters to trace what happens if Europe stays on its current path without major infrastructure shifts.

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Original post

Jeroen Wollaars@wol

Ik heb dit scenario over de Europese achterstand op AI gebied net geluisterd (Spotify) -> waanzinnig. Zou elke beleidsmaker dit nú willen doen en daarna in Nieuwsuur daarover in debat willen gaan. Wat. Een. Stuk.

Michiel Bakker@bakkermichiel

"What will happen to Europe if it keeps ignoring AI?"

Three American labs each (!!) operate more AI compute than all of Europe combined. Today we're launching Europe 2031: a story of what might happen if that doesn't change.

2:27 AM · Jun 17, 2026 · 3.1K Views

Policy Risk

The compute gap keeps widening on current trends

Estimates in the project put Europe at roughly 5% of global AI compute against about 80% for the US, with visuals showing the disparity growing sharply by 2031. No fresh primary measurements back the per-lab figures, so the comparison functions as an illustrative benchmark rather than verified data.

Open Question

Urgent calls focus on infrastructure and coalitions

The initiative pushes for massive new compute and energy builds plus partnerships beyond Europe, while critiquing existing pledges like the €200B InvestAI effort as mostly repackaged. Whether policymakers treat the scenario as a prompt for concrete spending remains an open variable.

Sentiment

Positive users praise reports warning of Europe's AI compute lag behind US labs as important and stimulating investment, while negative users call the scenarios depressing and criticize EU leaders as incompetent.

Pos

65.9%

Neg

34.1%

16 comments with sentiment.

Cluster Engagement

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Most Activity

VIEWS9.4KBOOKMARKS62LIKES73REPLIES4

Michiel Bakker@bakkermichiel

Scenario: https://europe2031.ai Summary: https://europe2031.ai/summary Audio: https://europe2031.ai/audio/

The ⭐⭐⭐ team: Daan Juijn, Stan van Baarsen @DadaJudith Lily Stelling, @philip_fox_ @AlexTPet @TomChivers

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RETWEETS104

Michiel Bakker@bakkermichiel

"What will happen to Europe if it keeps ignoring AI?"

Three American labs each (!!) operate more AI compute than all of Europe combined. Today we're launching Europe 2031: a story of what might happen if that doesn't change.

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Steve Faktor@ideafaktory

I respect your work and plan to read it, but the very existence and necessity of this report *is the problem*. The fact that a continent must be dragged kicking and screaming into what's undeniably the future is a sign of doom. The fact that European companies aren't elbowing each other in the face to innovate in this space is the very definition of surrender.

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Sam Dumitriu@Sam_Dumitriu

I enjoyed listening to this a lot.

A few questions:

1. Do you think you may have underplayed the positive stuff in Europe at the same time? Wouldn’t the productivity boom have eased the fiscal crisis?

2. Europe is mostly, but not wholly talked about as single unit (with the exception really of Netherlands/France). But, isn’t there a chance say Denmark with its flexicurity model would have managed the disruption much better? (I suspect the sovereignty/buy European stuff would have been much less likely to get off the ground.)

3. The rate of progress described makes me wonder how defensible ASML is? If China is cracking robotics/AI is improving so fast, how long is it really before the US builds one?

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Michiel Bakker@bakkermichiel

Thanks!!

1. I think the question is where the surplus of the boom will land. If Europe consumes AI mostly as imported services, the profits might land on US providers while the labour disruption hits in europe. There's also this post from @lugaricano which is worth reading about the risks of growth somewhere else https://www.siliconcontinent.com/p/r-without-g

2. On treating Europe as a single unit. There is big variance between member states which we mostly flattened for the story which is a fair criticism. Denmark is a super interesting case: flexicurity is built for fast reallocation, and it would likely outperform on managing transitions. We also highlight Denmark's model in the summary (https://europe2031.ai/summary). On buy-European: agreed it would face serious resistance, the scenario reflects the France version of that push and the friction it generates.

3. On ASML's defensibility, it's hard to tell. The moat is machine + suppliers + tacit knowledge so I think it's pretty defensible but you're right that, if AI is compressing R&D cycles, EUV might become harder to defend. Which makes it even more important for Europe to invest much more in innovation everywhere in the stack.

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Michael Dennis@MichaelD1729

Highly recommend this as a glimpse into the future. You can even listen to it on Spotify!

Michiel Bakker@bakkermichiel

"What will happen to Europe if it keeps ignoring AI?"

Three American labs each (!!) operate more AI compute than all of Europe combined. Today we're launching Europe 2031: a story of what might happen if that doesn't change.

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Andreas Ramos@Andreas_Ramos

@bakkermichiel @DadaJudith @philip_fox_ @AlexTPet @TomChivers - copy the summary - open your AI - ask, "Analyze this. describe the assumptions, uncover the political bias, state the authors' agenda, offer alternative outlooks. be analytical and critical."

you'll get better results than the comments here.

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Alex Petropoulos 🤠@AlexTPet

@bakkermichiel Summary:

It's so over. We could be so back.

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Elliot Leavy@ElliotLeavy

@bakkermichiel Very cool! Another option I don't see talked about. Europe pivots to China and stops selling the US lithography and starts selling it in the East.

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Matthew Kirtley@kirtlenus

@bakkermichiel This entire tripe is predicated on speculative productivity gains that aren't actually realised by workers.

Anybody who has to live with LLMs in the workplace knows this. The ability to just "ship" large outputs of anodyne text or bloated code means nothing.

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Michiel Bakker@bakkermichiel

@ideafaktory ASML let the last funding round in Mistral. Yes, I 100% agree it's not enough and much more should happen but I do think there's hope and that more urgency (like we're trying to create here) helps.

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Andrei Zaikin@ghuron

@bakkermichiel Quite superficial text, ignores real problems (energy, semi, data centers), focusing on improbable scenarios like "the US will close off frontier models"

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Lini32@Lini32

@bakkermichiel "Three American labs each (!!) operate more AI compute than all of Europe combined." and? This has not brought any meaningful benefits to American people other than making a few of them very rich and harming some local communities with dirty gas plants powering it.

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Tom Chivers@TomChivers

@Andreas_Ramos @bakkermichiel @DadaJudith @philip_fox_ @AlexTPet you know you're talking to one of the authors, right?

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туmrtn@tymrtn

@bakkermichiel Best best would be to take a $1T loan and buy the entire Anthropic float at IPO. I think Dario would actually be OK with this.

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Alex van Leeuwen@alexvanleeuwen

@bakkermichiel @bslagter Dit, als je dit vraagstuk voorlegt aan historische leiders & denkers. #TheLongCouncil #AI https://www.thelongcouncil.com/archive/countries-aim-build-control-own-ai-9xer?member=Helmut%20Schmidt

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Elliot Leavy@ElliotLeavy

@woot_woot26 @bakkermichiel Where did I say that?

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Pieter Garicano@pietergaricano

@bakkermichiel Really important stuff, Michiel!

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Oliver Klingefjord@klingefjord

@bakkermichiel @SwedishPM take heed plz

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Matija Franklin@FranklinMatija

@bakkermichiel Really looking forward to reading this!

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