Europe got its AI excuse

The White House's blocking of Anthropic's Mythos and Fable AI models from European allies is driving foreign nations to accelerate open-source AI adoption and build independent AI hubs, benefiting competitors like Mistral and Chinese open-weight models. European leaders are calling for tech sovereignty, with the EU and UK pushing back against the restrictions.

Europe got its AI excuse Blocking allies from Mythos and Fable is a gift to Mistral, open-weight Chinese models, and every government that already wanted an excuse to diversify. Welcome to . Cautious Optimism https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/ , a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat Monday. Welcome back Today, we’re diving into the impacts of blocking allies from American tech, Mistral, three major deals, and the latest from Microsoft regarding loops . To work — Alex Catching up on the Anthropic mess: Yesterday, CO went long https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/the-anthropic-fable-mess-explained/ on how we wound up with Anthropic’s latest models — Mythos 5 and Fable 5 — blocked around the world. Updating our coverage, Axios reports https://www.axios.com/2026/06/15/anthropic-white-house-fable-mythos that the breakdown between Anthropic and the White House stemmed from communication issues, with an administration source saying that “Anthropic has not done a great job at trying to speak to us and appreciate our ideological differences.” Bunch of whiners https://x.com/kevinbankston/status/2066529275067445462 . The good news https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/15/anthropic-mythos-trump-ai.html is that Anthropic is meeting with the Trump administration to hammer out their differences. More on why that matters below. 📈 Trending Up Oh god no https://www.wsj.com/finance/charlie-javice-has-been-seeking-a-pardon-from-trump-after-defrauding-jpmorgan-0b4e61db … rejecting pop caps https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20ygjem17zo … German GDP https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-government-spending-only-thing-preventing-gdp-fall-bundesbank-says-2026-06-12/ ? … social media bans https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/britain-expected-set-out-under-16s-social-media-restrictions-2026-06-14/ … corporate debt https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-15/nvidia-kicks-off-first-high-grade-bond-offering-since-2021 … US-EU relations https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/15/trumps-g2-china-g7-summit-france-00961540 … hopes, dreams https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/06/15/baby-boom-after-the-summer-fairytale-does-football-joy-raise-birth-rates … stocks on hopes of long-term peace in the Middle East https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/live/stock-market-today-monday-june-15-224751171.html … not US manufacturing https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/us-manufacturing-output-unchanged-may-133847300.html … Shooting our own feet: The Anthropic-White House mess is driving foreign nations to redouble their focus on deploying open-source and open-weight AI models over American-derived code, and accelerating efforts to build new AI hubs away from the technology’s two current centers in the United States and China. After being forced to wait for Mythos access long past some of their American rivals, European companies saw their access to Mythos and its Fable version Mythos + extensive safety guardrails taken away by fiat. Not good. In response, European technology leaders say it’s “ high time for action to make European tech sovereignty a reality https://www.euractiv.com/news/us-decision-to-block-mythos-access-fuels-european-calls-for-sovereignty/ ,” with bigwigs from across the political spectrum https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/13/wake-up-call-europe-reacts-to-anthropic-halting-access-to-its-fable-5-and-mythos-5-ai-mode venting their spleens in public. The EU is really not happy https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/eu-commission-looking-practical-consequences-anthropic-decision-spokesperson-2026-06-14/ . - There’s real money behind Europe’s efforts https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/attachment/882568/Factsheet%20Tech%20Sovereignty.pdf to build its own AI world, mind. The UK is making noise, too, asking the Trump administration https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/14/starmer-seeks-carve-out-from-trumps-anthropic-ai-ban/ for special access to Mythos and its derivatives. Canada is miffed, with PM Carney saying that his nation will have made an error if “ we just accept this, don’t take the lesson, don’t build out and diversify https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-14/carney-says-anthropic-ban-shows-risk-of-relying-on-big-ai-models?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MTQ2MTY5NiwiZXhwIjoxNzgyMDY2NDk2LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUR01OVUNUOU5KTFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIzNTk2NzdDODA0QTY0N0JGQTZDQTdEMzgzM0VCNjRCQSJ9.OzXfSkJgnmoOJl5CkNCcdvGTQ8QjlYe9tIkUCsrQA8I&leadSource=uverify%20wall .” No matter how you slice it, American AI models have just become less valuable globally because demand for them has been reduced. If you want American AI to run the world, it’s a terrible start to the week. And one, I hold, that could have been avoided with cooler heads in Washington. Regardless, the miserable news for American AI companies is great news for: Open-source AI, new AI hubs: The fastest way to get off American AI models is to use open-weight Chinese AI or models from the EU’s Mistral. Recall that these pages have called for the UK to throw its weight behind Mistral https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/the-uk-should-back-mistral/ , possibly with extensive fine-tuning of European models for its own shores. But it seems unlikely that an economy as small as the UK’s own 5th globally, while the EU is roughly tied for second place as a unit will be able to challenge the world’s larger and more advanced AI economies in the foundation model space. Expect to see demand for non-American models today, and in the future, and look for American AI companies to try to create some sort of stability promises to extra-national customers. No matter how many apologies American AI throws into the breach, I doubt other nations are willing to wager their economic future on inconsistently available technology whose access turns on the President’s whim. We will be able to test the validity of our thesis in two ways: First, by tracking earnings results from listed Chinese AI labs and the sources of their revenue; recall that MiniMax generated 70% of its revenue from “ international markets https://www.minimax.io/news/minimax-global-announces-full-year-2025-financial-results ” in 2025. Second, by how quickly Mistral scales. If it crushes its billion-euro revenue target for the year, we’re probably right. Not a bad time for lots of new AI investment in Europe by European companies, yeah? 📉 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html Trending Down 📉 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html Russia’s shadow fleet https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/14/uk-forces-board-sanctioned-russian-shadow-fleet-oil-tanker.html … working in media https://mediagazer.com/ a260615p2 … religious freedom in China https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9582vlm83o … EU-China relations https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3357208/eu-says-china-trained-russian-troops-bloc-weighs-tougher-stance-beijing … UK economic growth https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/uk-gdp-april-iran-war-growth.html … oil prices on hopes of peace in the Middle East https://apnews.com/article/stocks-markets-iran-trump-oil-musk-f2ee51f1b0686688b3e50068b4b71d70 … Roku’s independence : Fox, an American media company most famous for its ‘Fox News’ brand, intends to buy Roku https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fox-corporation-to-acquire-roku-inc-302800220.html , the consumer hardware and streaming company, for $22 billion in cash and stock enterprise value . The deal, worth $160 per share, is priced about a third above Roku’s pre-deal price. Shares of Roku naturally soared; shares of Fox are off 15% after the deal was announced. - Fox is worth about $22 billion market cap today. So, it’s about to digest something of nearly equal size. Perhaps investors are worried about post-transaction indigestion. - For those of you worried like myself , allowing a regime-aligned company to snap up a company that controlled 38.7 billion streaming hours https://image.roku.com/bWFya2V0aW5n/1Q26-Shareholder-Letter.pdf in the last quarter is a worrying development, after CNN was handed along with other media assets to a regime-aligned company after it took over CBS News and went after it with an axe. The Orbanization of the United States media landscape continues. And that’s bad. Intercom’s independence: Speaking of deals, the artist formerly known as Intercom is joining the Salesforce borg cube https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/Salesforce-Signs-Definitive-Agreement-to-Acquire-Fin/default.aspx . Recently rebranded as Fin in honor of its eponymous AI agent, the software startup was last valued at $1.275 in 2021 https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/intercom-announces-125-million-series-d-round/ , though it had secondary offerings in the interim and raised debt this year https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/03/10/intercom-raises-250m-in-debt-financing-to-fund-ai-agents/ . It’s selling for $3.6 billion, a tidy markup for its backers. - Salesforce recently bought Contentful https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-signs-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-contentful/ , putting it on a big-ticket buying spree. When your core market is slowing, is inorganic growth the new NDR? Want another deal? 1Password is buying cybersecurity startup Apono for up to $300 million https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1bbav611fx . Not a bad run of deals to close out Q2 Not wheeling out the guillotine: CO opposes https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/why-everyone-is-mad-at-california/ the California billionaire tax https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/why-everyone-is-mad-at-california/ because it’s bad policy. The one-time levy will not generate sufficient near-term revenue to offset the long-term loss of high-value taxpayers who will move out of the state in response I’ve started having more chats with folks just outside California for reasons . Anyhoo, John O’Farrell, the former a16z partner who recently called out his own industry https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/wall-street-bear-hugs-spacex/ for their efforts to stifle AI regulation, shared a New York Times opinion piece arguing https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/business/economy-trillionaire-wealth-wages.html?unlocked article code=1.qFA.Wp6g.W624Ko7oer4e&smid=nytcore-ios-share that while a few people are “getting fabulously, unimaginably wealthy,” their experience is in violent contrast with “entire generations of families worry ing they will never be able to afford to buy a house, raise children or enjoy a comfortable retirement.” The SF Standard recently reported https://sfstandard.com/2026/06/13/billionaire-tax-fight-sergey-brin-chris-larsen-mike-moritz-ron-conway/ on the billionaire group chat that formed to try to fight off the controversial tax. Add it all up, and we have a tech industry with new levels of wealth and power at the very same time that consumer sentiment is in the toilet https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/americans-grow-more-pessimistic-about-finances-rent-food-cost-fears-surge-fed-says . And the labor share of GDP is collapsing https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG , corporate profits are at an all-time high https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A053RC1Q027SBEA . And Elon Musk just became a trillionaire on the back of his AI investments, which are, well, unpopular with the public https://heatmap.news/politics/americans-pessimistic-about-ai . Oh, and the AI gods are collaborating to push democracy in their preferred direction. Seems unsustainable? - I don’t want to tell people what to do, but American tech companies appear to be betting on Trump and Trumpism https://www.thebulwark.com/p/jason-calacanis-the-silicon-valley far after the public has moved on https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin . That’s a risk. ~~I write prompts~~,~~ I spin up agents~~,~~ I orchestrate agents~~, I write loops Subscribe to Cautious Optimism to unlock the rest. Become a paying subscriber of Cautious Optimism to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. Subscribe https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/subscribe/?utm source=Cautious+Optimism&utm medium=website&utm campaign=article-paywall