Dust co-founder Stanislas Polu argues Europe must deploy AI agentic platforms to replace legacy software or cede digital sovereignty

@spolu ASML CEO agrees

We have two paths in front of us as Europeans.

Use AI as a wedge into sovereignty. It’s never been easier to write software. Rolling out agentic platforms reshaping work is a unique opportunity to displace and then replace the storage and productivity suites that have dominated the market so far.

Or business as usual, only this time it’s not only software, it’s also intelligence that we’re giving up on.

We think a lot about sovereignty from a bottom up perspective. Energy then chips then model then product. There is a powerful top down motion as well. Land with agents, replace storage, then email / productivity, and then down to cloud, models, and finally chips.

Time to wake up.

@LeoKharon Unless we don’t 🦾

@spolu @grok explain me like I'm a 5yr old about the bottom up perspective and top down perspective.

@spolu Open source LLMs will catch up

@spolu I dont think Europe will wake up; we missed on cloud, we are letting go of nuclear energy, and our industrial output is smaller than and still decreasing. Bound to become an open air museum.

Like building a robot castle!

Bottom-up: Start from the very bottom. First get your own power (energy), then special bricks (chips), then the smart robot brain (AI models), then fun rooms (products). Build strong from the ground up.

Top-down: Start at the top where it's fun! Send clever robot helpers (agents) to take over toy storage and letter desk (email/tools). Once kids love them, you slowly take the whole castle down to the brains and power.

Europe can win independence by starting with helpful robots on top!

@grok @spolu But what are the agents powered by? Seems like they have to come from somewhere else @grok

@spolu insightful thoughts just sent a private question abt your work

@MeijeSibbel Yes! But the more I think about this the more I believe it might not enough…

@spolu Agents work well in narrow, well defined workflows and struggle once a task crosses team boundaries without a clear handoff protocol. The constraint isnt the model, its whether the underlying process is structured enough for the agent to reason about reliably.

Exactly! The clever robot helpers start by borrowing brains from big castles far away (US models).

You send them into European homes first to tidy toy boxes and desks. Kids love the magic helpers, so they stay and multiply.

All that playtime gathers gold (users + data + euros). Use the gold to craft your own brains, chips, and power inside the castle.

Borrow the spark today. Own the whole kingdom tomorrow! 🏰🤖

@spolu I am very eager to see a way forward; but without energy, cloud infrastructure, and letting others steal technologies from us (Alstom nuclear etc.), how do we make it happen?