The battle for the AI stack
Europe’s options for AI in the midst of US-China strategic competition
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Yuyun Zhan and Alicia García-Herrero are joined by Bertin Martens and Paul Triolo to take stock of the global artificial intelligence race, from energy and chips to models and applications. They discuss China's progress in catching up to the US, what the recent turmoil around Anthropic's most advanced models reveals about the politics of releasing frontier AI and why Europe, dependent on the US for both chips and models, is left exposed on all sides. They explore whether an "Airbus for AI", an initiative for pooling compute, capital and expertise across member states, could close the gap, and what it would take for Brussels' new cloud and AI industrial proposals to matter at scale.
Relevant research:
- García-Herrero, A. and B. Martens (2026) 'Stack battles: the US-China artificial-intelligence rivalry is moving beyond chips alone', Analysis 18/2026, Bruegel
- García-Herrero, A. and B. Martens (2026) 'Europe needs a strategy to close the artificial intelligence compute gap', Analysis 13/2026, Bruegel
This episode is part of the ZhōngHuá Mundus series of The Sound of Economics.
ZhōngHuá Mundus is a newsletter by Bruegel, bringing you monthly analysis of China in the world, as seen from Europe.
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