This Week in European Tech: Apple rents AI. What should Europe build?

Apple’s decision to rent rather than build its core AI model raises a wider question for Europe: where should companies own the technology, and where does it make more sense to build on top of the best models available?That is one of the themes in this episode of This Week in European Tech, featuring Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen and Priyanka Savjani of SuperSeed, alongside Andrew J Scott of 7percent Ventures. They also discuss where Mistral and Wayve can compete, why business data is becoming more valuable and how the AI infrastructure boom is starting to reshape capital markets.HighlightsWhy Apple may have made “renting AI” more respectableWhere Mistral could find an advantage beyond the frontier-model raceWhy business data is becoming one of AI’s most valuable assetsWhy governments should act as customers, not just grant providersHow AI infrastructure spending is moving into debt marketsWhy new forms of AI reasoning are raising questions around observability and safetyTimestamps(00:00) Intro(03:00) Broadcom and the AI chip race(06:00) Matt Clifford, Anthropic and where AI power sits(08:00) Apple rents AI: build or buy?(12:00) nScale and the numbers behind its AI infrastructure story(14:00) Wayve, Waymo and the autonomous driving race(17:00) Why governments should become startup customers(18:00) Europe, capital flows and the AI kill switch debate(21:00) Thinking Machines, Mistral and the open-source AI race(25:00) Meta’s AI pricing bet and the value of business data(31:00) Why bond markets suddenly matter to tech(37:00) AI financing moves from equity into debt(41:00) Oracle’s leveraged bet on OpenAI(43:00) What happens when AI models reason in their own language?(47:00) Deals of the week(50:00) What to watch next week