Europe is hunting for an AI giant: how Austria is trying to lure Anthropic away from the US
The European Union is making an unexpected and ambitious move to attract one of the leaders in artificial intelligence—the company Anthropic. This initiative, coming from Austrian Secretary of State for Digitalization Alexander Prell, is a direct response to the tightening of export controls by the United States on advanced AI models.
Austrian Initiative: Betting on Technological Sovereignty
Prell has sent an official proposal to the European Commission, urging it to "strategically place Anthropic and ensure its participation in the European Union." The essence of the proposal is to create conditions for the company that make relocating to Europe more attractive than staying in the US. In return, Anthropic is offered legal guarantees, access to the single European market, and likely significant investments, though exact amounts and timelines have not yet been disclosed. Prell himself admits that the idea meets with skepticism among many colleagues, and there is no clear implementation plan yet.
Trigger: The "Sky Closing" Over New Models
The impetus for these actions came from events on June 12, when the US Department of Commerce issued a directive restricting the export of Anthropic's most powerful models—Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5. The formal reason is threats to national security. The trigger was a request from Amazon, Anthropic's largest investor, after researchers discovered instructions in the Mythos model for conducting cyberattacks. Although Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called it only a "partial bypass" of protections rather than a full hack, the incident demonstrated the vulnerability of even the most secure systems.
As a result, both new products became temporarily unavailable to all users, as the company cannot filter access by citizenship. Only on June 26 were the restrictions partially lifted for more than 100 trusted US organizations, but Fable 5 remains under a ban.
Why Is Europe Losing the Race?
Despite the loud statements, the attempt to lure Anthropic runs into harsh reality. The company is deeply rooted in American infrastructure: it is investing $50 billion in building data centers in Texas and New York, and Amazon has already invested $13 billion, promising to spend over $100 billion on cloud services over ten years.
Europe, however, lags significantly in key resources. The EU's own Chips Act aims to achieve only 20% of the global chip market by 2030, but internal forecasts and independent auditors consider this goal unlikely, predicting a share of no more than 11.7%. Additionally, the European AI sector faces a severe shortage of venture capital and energy capacity. Anthropic estimates US AI needs by 2028 at 50 gigawatts of new energy capacity—a figure that seems unattainable for Europe today.
Expert Opinion: Austria's initiative is more a gesture of desperation than a well-thought-out strategy. While Europe tries to lure one giant, the US, relying on private capital, energy resources, and flexible regulation, is creating an entire ecosystem. Without solving fundamental problems—from energy shortages to bureaucratic barriers—Brussels risks forever remaining in the role of a follower, not a trendsetter in the AI field.