> Some people say it's a loss for EU sovereign AI but HF is technically an American corporation Three French founders set up the company in New York, raised th

> Some people say it's a loss for EU sovereign AI but HF is technically an American corporation Three French founders set up the company in New York, raised their money from American investors (Salesforce, GV, IBM, Nvidia) and are now selling to an American chip company for $12.9B. Europe's most successful AI company was only ever European in the nationality of its founders. > the founders (Julien, Thomas and Clem - all French) stem to make significant amount of money, which they are likely to pour into a new frontier AI lab in Europe Why would they do that? They already moved to America once to build a company. Since then the EU has passed the AI Act (obligations on general purpose model providers in force since August 2025), so the incentive to build the next one in Europe is weaker than it was in 2016, not stronger. Ambitious Europeans have been voting with their feet for decades. The EU could fix this any time it liked by getting out of the way of its own entrepreneurs, but it prefers to write more regulation and then complain about "sovereignty" when the businesses it drove away get bought.