Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaks with French President Emmanuel Macron at Station F, during an event on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, France, Feb. 11, 2025.
Aurelien Morissard | Via Reuters
PARIS — Music was blaring and people were cheering at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris on Monday as French President Emmanuel Macron declared France is “back in the AI race.”
The bold call comes after Macron touted a 109 billion euro ($112.8 billion) investment in AI in the country. But it also underscores Europe’s desire, led by France, to be a part of the conversation around AI leadership and innovation that has so far been dominated by the U.S. and China.
Europe has long been seen by its critics as a place that has regulated the tech industry too heavily to the detriment of innovation.
Though that image has not entirely been changed, there are some in the technology industry who think Europe is moving in the right direction.
“As a European region, at least, we are starting to see global leaders emerge, and that’s the thing we really need,” Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video company Synthesia, told CNBC in an interview on Monday.
There are a number of key companies in Europe, ranging from self-driving technology startup Wayve in the U.K. to OpenAI rival Mistral in France.
“So I think it’s great that we invest more in infrastructure. I don’t think it’s the sole solution to the problem. … But what I think is really great is that there’s political will to actually do something,” Riparbelli added.
‘Fork in the road’
Last year, economist and politician Mario Draghi released a report that urged more investment in the European Union in order to boost competitiveness.
Draghi’s report noted that there are innovative ideas, but startups are “failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations.”
Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, told CNBC on Monday that based on his experience at the AI Action Summit, there is tension between Europe at the EU level and the countries within it.
“You can get this sense that there’s almost this fork in the road, maybe even a tension right now between a Europe at the EU level that is looking at a fairly significant, heavier regulatory approach. And then some of the countries, a France, a Germany, a UK, though not technically the EU, certainly European, they’re looking to maybe go in a little bit of a different direction that actually wants to embrace the innovation,” Lehane told CNBC.
He said that previous AI summits hosted by the U.K. and South Korea have focused on the safety around AI, but the Paris edition has a change of tone.
“I think this conference, you’re beginning to see maybe a different definition or consideration, that perhaps the bigger risk right now is missing out on the opportunity,” Lehane added.
Europe the ‘referee’
Still, the image of Europe as a burdensome place for tech regulation has not been shaken.
The EU’s AI Act was the first major law in the world governing artificial intelligence to go into effect in 2024. It has been criticized by companies as well as individual countries such as France which have said that the legislation could stifle innovation.
“One of the metaphors I sometimes use you look at AI as a World Cup football match between the U.S. and China. And if all Europe is trying to do is be the referee, there’s two problems. One, they never win, and two, no one really likes the referee,” Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and an investor at venture capital firm Greylock, told CNBC on Monday.
Christel Heydemann, the CEO of telecommunications firm Orange, told CNBC in an interview on Tuesday that there is too much regulation in Europe.
“So that’s that’s slowing us down, especially when you think about the potential of the European market,” Heydemann said.
She did, however, strike an optimistic tone on Europe’s position on AI.
I don’t think, in the end, it’s a race between U.S. and China. Actually, the president of the European Commission has been very clear, Europe wants to be a continent of AI, and the race is not over yet,” Heydemann added.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to members of the media as he arrives at a lodge for the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
The reach for additional capacity aligns with OpenAI’s desire for more computing power to meet heavy demand after initially relying exclusively on Microsoft for cloud capacity. The two companies’ relations have evolved since then, with Microsoft naming OpenAI as a competitor last year.
Both companies sell AI tools for developers and offer subscriptions to companies.
OpenAI has added Google to a list of suppliers, specifying that ChatGPT and its application programming interface will use the Google Cloud Platform, as well as Microsoft, CoreWeave and Oracle.
The announcement amounts to a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than Amazon‘s and Microsoft‘s. Google also has cloud business with Anthropic, which was established by former OpenAI executives.
The Google infrastructure will run in the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.
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Last year, Oracleannounced that it was partnering with Microsoft and OpenAl “to extend the Microsoft Azure Al platform to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure” to give OpenAI additional computing power. In March, OpenAI committed to a cloud agreement with CoreWeave in a five-year deal worth nearly $12 billion.
Microsoft said in January that it had agreed to move to a model of providing the right of first refusal anytime OpenAI needs more computing resources, rather than being its exclusive vendor across the board. Microsoft continues to hold the exclusive on OpenAI’s programming interfaces.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, said in April that the startup, which draws on Nvidia graphics processing units to power its large language models, was facing capacity constraints.
“if anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call!” he wrote in an X post at the time.
Reuters reported in June that OpenAI was planning to bring on cloud capacity from Google.
Elon Musk interviews on CNBC from the Tesla Headquarters in Texas.
CNBC
In May, Tesla changed its corporate bylaws in a way that would require investors to own 3% of the stock, today worth about $30 billion, in order to file a derivative lawsuit against the company for breach of fiduciary duties. Authorities in New York State are now asking Tesla to delete the bylaw entirely.
Overseers of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which owns about 0.1% of Tesla’s shares, submitted a formal proxy proposal and letter to the company on July 11, and shared it with CNBC on Wednesday. They say that Elon Musk’s automaker engaged in a “bait-and-switch” to convince shareholders to approve an incorporation move from Delaware to Texas in June 2024.
Musk made the move after a judge in Delaware voided the $56 billion pay package that the CEO, also the world’s richest person, was granted by Tesla in 2018, the largest compensation plan in public company history. In getting shareholders to approve the change in its state of incorporation, Tesla said that stakeholders’ rights “are substantially equivalent” under the laws of Delaware and Texas.
On May 14, almost a year after Tesla’s move, Texas changed its law to allow corporations in the state to require 3% ownership before being able to carry forth a shareholder derivative suit.
“The very next day, Tesla’s board amended the Company’s bylaws to the maximum allowable 3% ownership threshold, effectively insulating the Company’s directors and officers from accountability to shareholders,” the New York letter says. The letter was signed by Gianna McCarthy, a director of corporate governance with the retirement fund, on behalf of the fund and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Only three institutions currently own at least 3% of Tesla’s outstanding shares.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York fund overseers wrote that derivative actions are “the last resort for shareholders to enforce their rights” when company directors or officers violate their fiduciary obligations, and called Tesla’s decision on the matter “egregious.”
In an email to CNBC, DiNapoli said Tesla “deceived shareholders” in assuring them that their rights would remain the same in Texas.
“These actions violate basic tenets of good corporate governance and must be reversed,” he wrote.
Peter Thiel, president and founder of Clarium Capital Management LLC, holds hundred dollars bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Florida, U.S., on Thursday, April 7, 2022.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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The current wave of interest in Ethereum and related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, and a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s wildly successful IPO and ongoing progress in Congress on the Senate’s proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.
The price of ether itself also continued its rally, up more than 4% Wednesday. The coin has doubled in price in the past three months.
Thiel is a venture capitalist and hedge fund manager best known as a cofounder of both PayPal and Palantir and an early investor in Facebook. Founders Fund was an investor in Tagomi, the crypto brokerage acquired by Coinbase in 2020, and Polymarket, the prediction market built on Ethereum.
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