European tech CEOs urge ‘Europe-first’ mentality to counter U.S. dominance after Trump victory
Thomas Plantenga, CEO of used fashion resale app Vinted, on center stage during Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Harry Murphy | Sportsfile for Web Summit Getty Images
LISBON, Portugal — Tech CEOs in Europe are urging region al countries to take bolder action to tackle Big Tech’s dominance and counter reliance on the U.S. for critical technologies like artificial intelligence after Donald Trump’s electoral win.
The Republican politician’s victory was a key topic among prominent tech bosses at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Many attendants said they’re unsure of what to expect from the U.S. president-elect, citing this unpredictability as a core challenge at present.
Andy Yen, CEO of Swiss VPN developer Proton, says Europe should echo American protectionism and adopt a more “Europe-first” approach to technology — in part to reverse the trend of the last two decades, during which much of the Western world’s most important technologies, from web browsing to smartphones, have become dominated by a handful of large U.S. tech firms.
VPNs, or virtual private networks, are services that encrypt data and mask a user’s IP address to hide browsing activity and bypass censorship.
“It’s time for Europe to step up,” Yen told CNBC on the sidelines of Web Summit. “It’s time to be bold. It’s time to be more aggressive. And the time is now, because we now have a leader in the U.S. that is ‘America-first,’ so I think our European leaders should be ‘Europe-first.'”
One key push for the past decade from the European Union has been to take legal action and introduce tough new regulations to tackle the dominance of large technology players, such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
As Trump prepares to come into power for a second mandate, concerns have now mounted that Europe might reel in its tough approach to tech giants out of fear of retaliation from the new administration.
US Big Tech playing ‘extremely unfairly’
Proton’s Yen, for one, urged the EU not to water down its attempts to rein in America’s tech giants.
“Europe has been thinking in a very globalist mindset. They’re thinking we need to be fair to everybody, we need to open our market to everybody, we need to play fair, because we believe in fairness,” he told CNBC.
“Well, guess what? The Americans and the Chinese didn’t get the memo. They have been playing extremely unfairly for the last 20 years. And now they have a president that is extremely ‘America-first.'”
Mitchell Baker, former CEO of American open internet non-profit Mozilla Foundation, said the EU’s DMA has led to meaningful changes for the Firefox browser, with activity increasing since Google implemented a “choice screen” on Android phones that enables users to select their search engine.
“The change in Firefox new users and market share on Android is noticeable,” Baker said. “That’s nice for us — but it’s also an indicator of how much power and centralized distribution that these companies have.”
She added, “This change in usage because of one choice screen isn’t the full picture. But it is an indicator of the kind of things that consumers can’t choose and that businesses can’t build successfully because of the way the tech industry is structured right now.”
Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Lithuania-headquartered used clothing resale app Vinted, urged Europe to take the “right choices” to ensure the continent can “fend for ourselves” and does not get “left behind.”
“If you look very realistically at what countries do, they try to take care of themselves and they try to form coalitions to be stronger themselves, and as a coalition be stronger,” Plantenga told CNBC in an interview. “We have a lot of very talented, well-educated people.”
“We need [to] ensure that we can take care of our own safety, that we can take care of our own energy, that we ensure to keep on investing in our education and innovation so that we can keep up with the rest [of the world],” he stressed. “If we don’t, then we’ll be left behind. In every collaboration, it’s always a trade. And if we don’t have much to trade, we become weaker.”
‘AI sovereignty’ now a key battleground
Another theme that attracted much chatter on the ground at Web Summit was the idea of “AI sovereignty” — which refers to countries and regions localizing critical computing infrastructure behind AI services, so that these systems become more reflective of regional languages, cultures and values.
With Microsoft becoming a key player in AI, concerns have surfaced that the maker of the Windows operating system and Office productivity tools suite has secured a dominant position when it comes to foundational AI tools.
The tech giant is a key backer behind ChatGPT maker OpenAI, whose technology it also heavily uses in its own products.
For some startups, Microsoft’s decision to embrace AI has resulted in harmful, anti-competitive effects.
Last year, Microsoft hiked the fees it charges search engines to use its Bing Search APIs, which allow developers access to the tech giant’s backend search infrastructure — in part because of higher costs attached to its AI-powered search features.
“They’re gradually reducing our revenue — we’re still relying on them — and that reduces our capacity to do things,” Christian Kroll, CEO of sustainability-focused search engine Ecosia, told CNBC. “Microsoft is a very fierce competitor.”
CNBC has reached out to Microsoft for comment.
Ecosia recently partnered with fellow search provider Qwant to build a European search index and reduce dependence on U.S. Big Tech to deliver web browsing results.
Meanwhile, the European Union’s AI Act, a landmark artificial intelligence law with global implications, introduces new transparency requirements and restrictions on companies developing and using AI.
The laws are likely to have a big impact on predominantly U.S. tech firms, since they’re the ones doing much of the development of — and investment in — AI.
With Trump set to come into power, it’s unclear what that could mean for the global AI regulatory landscape.
Shelley McKinley, chief legal officer of code repository platform GitHub, said she can’t predict what Trump will do in his second term — but that businesses are planning for a range of different scenarios in the meantime.
“We will learn in the next few months what President-elect Trump will say, and in January we will start seeing some of what President Trump does in this area,” McKinley said during a CNBC-moderated panel earlier this week.
“I do think it is important that we all, as society, as businesses, as people, continue to think about the different scenarios,” she added. “I think, as with any political change, as with any world change, we’re still all thinking about what are all of the scenarios we might operate.”
A Tesla robotaxi drives on the street along South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, on June 22, 2025
Joel Angel Juarez | Reuters
Tesla was contacted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday after videos posted on social media showed the company’s robotaxis driving in a chaotic manner on public roads in Austin, Texas.
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker debuted autonomous trips in Austin on Sunday, opening the service to a limited number of riders by invitation only.
In the videos shared widely online, one Tesla robotaxi was spotted traveling the wrong way down a road, and another was shown braking hard in the middle of traffic, responding to “stationary police vehicles outside its driving path,” among several other examples.
A spokesperson for NHTSA said in an e-mail that the agency “is aware of the referenced incidents and is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information.”
Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy, and regulatory counsel Casey Blaine didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal safety regulator says it doesn’t “pre-approve new technologies or vehicle systems.” Instead, automakers certify that each vehicle model they make meets federal motor vehicle safety standards. The agency says it will investigate “incidents involving potential safety defects,” and take “necessary actions to protect road safety,” after assessing a wide array of reports and information.
NHTSA previously initiated an investigation into possible safety defects with Tesla’s FSD-Supervised technology, or FSD Beta systems, following injurious and fatal accidents. That probe is ongoing.
The Tesla robotaxis in Austin are Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest FSD Unsupervised software and hardware. The pilot robotaxi service, involving fewer than two-dozen vehicles, operates during daylight hours and only in good weather, with a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat.
The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.” Those who have received invites are mostly promoters of Tesla’s products, stock and CEO.
While the rollout sent Tesla shares up 8% on Monday, the launch fell shy of fulfilling Musk’s many driverless promises over the past decade.
In 2015, Musk told shareholders Tesla cars would achieve “full autonomy” within three years. In 2016, he said a Tesla EV would be able to make a cross-country drive without needing any human intervention before the end of 2017. And in 2019, on a call with institutional investors that helped him raise more than $2 billion, Musk said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxi-ready vehicles on the road in 2020, able to complete 100 hours of driving work per week each, making money for their owners.
None of that has happened.
Meanwhile, Alphabet-owned Waymo says it has surpassed 10 million paid trips last month. Competitors in China, including Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide and Pony.ai, are also operating commercial robotaxi fleets.
WATCH: Tesla launches robotaxis in Austin as robotaxi race heats up
Mustafa Hatipoglu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Meta spoke with artificial intelligence startup Runway about a potential takeover ahead of its multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI, CNBC confirmed Monday.
Runway is best known for its AI video-generation tools and earned a spot on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list earlier this month.
The deal talks between Meta and Runway did not progress far and dissolved, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to the confidential nature of the discussions.
Bloomberg earlier reported the talks. Meta declined to comment.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively pushing to bolster his company’s AI efforts in recent months. The social media giant invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI in June, and it has also approached the startups Safe Superintelligence and Perplexity AI about potential acquisitions this year.
Meta agreed to a 49% stake in Scale AI and hired away founder Alexandr Wang along with a few other employees from the company.
While Meta was unsuccessful in its efforts to buy Superintelligence outright, Daniel Gross, the company’s CEO, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are joining Meta’s AI efforts, where they will work on products under Wang.
A woman walks past a logo of WhatsApp during a Meta event in Mumbai, India, on Sept. 20, 2023.
Niharika Kulkarni | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Meta is pushing back against a ban on WhatsApp from government devices.
The chief administrative officer, or CAO, of the U.S. House of Representatives told staffers on Monday that they are not allowed to use Meta’s popular messaging app. The CAO cited a lack of transparency about WhatsApp’s data privacy and security practices as the reason for the ban, according to a report by Axios that cited an internal email from the government office.
The CAO told House staff members in the email that they are not allowed to download WhatsApp on their government devices or access the app on their smartphones or desktop computers, the report said. Staff members must remove WhatsApp from their devices if they have the app installed on their devices, the report said.
“Protecting the People’s House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff,” U.S. House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor told CNBC in a written statement.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone on Monday responded to the report via a post on X, saying the company disagrees “with the House Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization in the strongest possible terms.”
“We know members and their staffs regularly use WhatsApp and we look forward to ensuring members of the House can join their Senate counterparts in doing so officially,” Stone said.
In a separate X post, Stone said WhatsApp’s encrypted nature provides a “higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO’s approved list that do not offer that protection.”
Some of the messaging apps the CAO said are acceptable alternatives to WhatsApp include Microsoft Teams, Signal and Apple’s iMessage, the Axios report said.
Meta is currently embroiled in an antitrust case with the Federal Trade Commission over the social media company’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.
Last week, Meta debuted ads in WhatsApp in an effort to monetize the app that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has deemed “the next chapter” for his company’s history.
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