On June 9, 2026, Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Three days later, a US government export control directive, motivated by “national security reasons” related to a limited jailbreak, suspended all access to the two models for any “foreign national,” including foreign employees of Anthropic itself. To be compliant, the company shut down Fable and Mythos for everyone.
The block is temporary, but the tool is not: once it is proven that the button works, those who control it decide when to press it. Today for technical reasons, tomorrow for commercial or geopolitical reasons.
The dominant European reaction goes in the opposite direction: “blame the EU.” It is a shortcut that confuses the EU (a political body with specific levers) with Europe (a continent with an industrial, financial, and social system that precedes and surpasses Brussels) and calls into question the institutional level, which is easy, to avoid looking at an uncomfortable one: the lack of a real capital market.
EU is not Europe
The EU is regulation of the single market, a budget of 1% of aggregate GDP, trade policy, and antitrust. It does not issue sovereign debt, does not manage pensions, does not own banks, does not decide insurance investments, does not finance universities, does not control corporate shareholdings.
Europe includes 27 member states, plus the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Norway. Capital markets built on 30 national legal systems. Pension funds managed in Rome, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam. Banks and insurers that answer to national regulators.
Universities funded by the States.
When an editorialist says “blame the EU” thinking of AI, they mean the AI Act or GDPR. These are regulatory criticisms with legitimate reasons (application fragmentation, compliance costs) and less legitimate reasons when regulation is presented as the cause of a billion-dollar scale gap. The problem of AI in Europe is capital, and it is a European matter, not a community one: of the States, pension funds, banks, shareholdings.
The numbers
The 2024 Draghi report recalled that AI startups born in the EU raised 6% of global funding, against 61% in the USA. The Stanford AI Index confirms the same proportion for 2025: $285.9 billion of private AI investment in the United States, $12.4 billion in China, and $20.9 billion in all of Europe (EU + UK + Switzerland + Norway combined). Looking only at generative AI, the United States spent $163.6 billion, while China and Europe combined stop at $4.7 billion.
The United Kingdom has been out of the Union since 2020 and has not closed the gap faster than EU countries: if Brussels regulation were the cause, those outside should be flying. They are not. Anthropic, in a single round (the $30 billion in February 2026), raised more than all continental AI VC raises in a year. The Stargate project, announced in January 2025, plans $500 billion for data centers in the USA, on June 17, 2026, more than Belgium’s GDP. Even doubling European AI VC from one year to the next, we would remain at one-tenth of that of the United States.
The causes are national
McKinsey, in 2024, quantified the gap. European venture capital is worth a quarter of American, and between 2015 and 2022 large US companies invested 700 billion euros more than their European counterparts. These are asymmetries that are not resolved in Brussels.
In Europe, only 11% of VC fundraising comes from pension funds (Invest Europe). In the USA, it is the primary source. Solvency II imposes constraints, but the share invested by large German, Italian, French, and Dutch funds almost always remains below allowed ceilings. Not investing in high-risk technologies is a decision of the Boards of Directors.
Allianz, AXA, Generali, and Aviva can buy shares of Anthropic. They do not. The same goes for patient capital: CDP, KfW, and Bpifrance have large balance sheets and long mandates, and they serve to stabilize crises and infrastructure, not to push risk where the private sector does not reach.
The AI Act is EU. The capital is Europe
The AI Act has real problems (application fragmentation, ambiguity about generalist models, the form of a single regulation for a field that evolves every six months) and deserves a revision. What would change if we repealed it tomorrow? Normatively, CEOs would stop complaining. In terms of orders of magnitude, nothing.
Mistral, the only frontier champion born on the continent and subject to the AI Act, closed a round of $1.7 billion at a valuation of $11.7 billion and is negotiating a new one of about $3 billion at about $20 billion. Regulation does not block growth: the scale jump is missing. Mistral raised them with a round led by ASML, with Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst alongside Bpifrance. Even with a European (Dutch) lead, without US capital that round would have been smaller.
What is needed
At the EU level, it would be necessary to complete the capital markets union, reform Solvency II, expand the mandate of the EIB and EIF, and build a European vehicle for strategic technologies. These are things already present in the Draghi report.
At the national level, the heaviest decisions remain in the capitals. Italian, German, and French pension funds can change allocation tomorrow: they do not because the Boards do not want or do not know how to do it. CDP, KfW, Bpifrance can rethink their mandate. Banks and insurers can become shareholders of frontier companies. Universities can pay researchers at competitive levels: it is a budget choice.
Stopping treating the delay as a “Brussels” problem is the first condition to face it as an Italian, German, French, European industrial problem. Unless deciding to have a federation.
In conclusion
The IPO that Anthropic filed on June 1 will take place in the USA, not Frankfurt. Among the investors are Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Fidelity, ICONIQ. Not Allianz, AXA, Generali, Intesa, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas. Brussels does not prevent European companies from investing. The European financial system, built in thirty years of national choices, favors real estate and sovereign bonds. We depend on Anthropic for technology and on Washington for access.
(Excerpt from the European Mattinale)
