The problem is the EU is still suffering startup drain to USA entirely because of market and regulatory burdens. We just saw this most recently with Heart Aerospace. They warned EU regulators repeatedly that it was very difficult to develop frontier technology in Europe. And then they eventually just relocated to California completely.
These are political and societal issues that are very difficult to solve. Not to mention that energy insecurity and cost makes Europe non-competitive from the outset.
This particular example is hardly representative. The market they work on is difficult. They may have an ambition to become Tesla of airplanes, but it did not take a long time before traditional manufacturers learned from Tesla’s success and took over. VW builds more electric cars, and number one globally is a Chinese company. With airplanes, becoming an independent manufacturer is a long and risky path. In the end, their main choice is between being acquired by Boeing or Airbus if they are successful, or being outcompeted by incumbents or Chinese. I do not think this reflects the investment climate in Europe in general. There are fields where startups can do well, and fields where starting something new in Europe is generally a bad idea. I’m not sure that’s always because of regulations.
All the money is in Silicon Valley, that's why they move there.
If this was a US vs EU thing, I would love to hear a US tech giant that isn't in Silicon Valley or Seattle.
Fact is, even in US, no other city was able to replicate that success. For example, there would be no point to move your startup from EU to New York for example.
Micron was founded in Boise Idaho and is still headquartered there. Cymer, which makes the EUV light source in ASML machines, was founded in San Diego, and is still there.
Lots and lots of US tech giants are not in Silicon Valley or Seattle. In fact, Texas, North Carolina, New York, Georgia, and Virginia have huge hubs of tech giants - especially the Research Triangle Park in NC.
I agree with the general premise that US tech isn't exclusively in Silicon Valley or Seattle. But those regions clearly still play an enormously outsized role in the US tech industry, to the point where it seems unlikely US tech would be as globally dominant without them.
Notably several entries on your list are companies that were founded and grew successful before moving to the locations you listed, often for tax breaks and/or to fit the politics of the company executives. Aside from Dell, all the companies you listed as being located in Texas became successful elsewhere first. Texas has proved it can lure in already successful companies more than it has demonstrated it can grow them.
Which is itself a legitimate achievement, but if the question is how you grow new successful tech companies, it's not a super useful data point especially if we're taking about different countries. There are relatively few barriers for a company that grew up and became successful in the environment of Silicon Valley to move to Austin with the promise of lower taxes, but Europe can't quite replicate that same migratory model to grown their own tech industry.
My list exactly addresses your point: "If this was a US vs EU thing, I would love to hear a US tech giant that isn't in Silicon Valley or Seattle". I have shown you at least 10 US tech giants that are not in Silicon Valley. I also did not include many others such as Network Appliance, Texas Instruments, Pfizer, Micron Technologies, Akamai, etc. Regardless of their size vs Siemens, they are huge in the industry. But, keep moving the goalposts if that makes you feel better.
And, no, we are not ignorant to the fact Europe does not have tech companies. No one said that, but you seem to have a real axe to grind against the US. I suggest you step outside and touch some grass.
BTW: I have traveled all over the EU and one thing holds true: folks there are the most arrogant and condescending people I have ever met. And your remarks proves the point once again. They are truly unapproachable. They do not smile and they refuse to acknowledge each other when grocery shopping, walking on the sidewalks, riding on the bus/train - essentially in any public space. It must be absolutely depressing to live in such a culture all the time.
Edit: I see you removed your nasty comment: "Are Americans really that ignorant that they think Europeans don't have tech companies the size of Redhat". Why?
This is the mistake they made. Anthropic and OpenAI are great technically. I love them. But they are absolute crap at making most people feeling like its relevant to them or that AI companies care about them. So its' really easy to be dismissive of the tech and oppose things like data centers. I think the influencer route is a quick fix. They need to appeal to everyday problems but, understandably, the founders like Dario and Altman think very high level. They think they are doing what's best in a way, but not in a way that's relateable to most people. LLMs need to be more human friendly; example, solve little problems like actually writing without sounding like AI
I think the OP was referring not to their public image, but to the incongruity of paying human influencers instead of deploying computer-generated influencers created by their world-beating models supposedly worth $30T.
OpenAI is trying to level up their growth marketing to match Anthropic’s. Tactics in growth marketing (speaking from my experience leading in this space) are not public knowledge as it’s a cat-and-mouse game on multiple fronts (ie CAC goes up and changes the economics when a high ROI source is found, etc. etc. etc.), which makes hiring the right person vital as information asymmetries are where the ROI is (ie more revenue per dollar spent on marketing). Anthropic hired the right person for strategy and execution long ago in LLM-years, and there is a good podcast on the story here:
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-grow...
The thinking people who would find this interesting and read this are probably more than capable of understanding this and critical enough to expect that. Conversation over the title is distraction of what's important. Just stick to keeping original source title and let people vote and down vote if they don't like it. That's what votes are for.
There is an essence to humanity in this type of work: "I'm doing this because I enjoy the way it makes me feel and nothing else". It's inspirational and I love looking at it. Keeping doing what you love, it also brings joy to others.
It could go either way. I think its better for Nvidia to play both open sides and closed models as their chips will be used in both. The only thing that compromises them is that there is a lot of investment they have in the closed models.
This is a very well trodden argument the poster is largely right about. But like others who have written about it like Nicholas Carr and Anil Dash, I agree with the concern, but it places a lot of agency on the technology and not the users decisions. On one hand, you can argue for a long time Google was the default page for the internet so you had no choice but to use it to search, on the other hand, people need to use their brains more when thinking critically. They need to learn how to use it to assist in thought. Yes, Google search results are ads, but scroll past the first few pages and dig. Also, refine searches and look at other sources by people you trust. Ultimately, this is a real concern, and I'm glad the author is updating thoughts on it.
1) This is going to be like Electric cars. You see how far ahead China is there for commercial viability for a wider consumer base
2) There are many reasons why Anthropic and Open Ai will collapse aside from this.
3) Wait until you have non-China models that are good enough. Hint: they already exist. Microsoft partnering with Mistral is a big red flag for OpenAI and Anthropic.
2. They don't have to replace a lot of US tech before the economic impact compounds to effect the US.
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