Europe Is Building Servers – But Missing Infrastructure

Nimer Björnberg, Co-founder & CEO, NorNor AB

The EU is investing heavily in AI – but risks missing the real question.

AI is changing the world at an unprecedented pace. Innovation is accelerating faster than ever – but while the U.S. and China are laying the foundations of the future digital economy, Europe risks being left behind despite its ambitious goals.

What began as theoretical models in research labs has rapidly become a force reshaping entire industries. Breakthroughs in machine learning and generative AI are now reaching full-scale impact, driven by exponential advances in models, massive data availability, and surging demand for intelligent automation.

To stay in the game, the EU has announced a historic EUR 200 billion investment package aimed at boosting its global competitiveness in AI. The strategy includes building advanced AI infrastructure, funding research and innovation, reducing reliance on American and Chinese tech providers, and deploying AI across healthcare, industry, and public services. But these investments risk missing the core question: Who controls the digital infrastructure AI depends on?

Data centers are not the answer to Europe's digital dependence.

We’re seeing a wave of data center investments across Europe, often highlighted as key to achieving digital sovereignty. Mistral AI, for instance, plans to invest billions in its own data center in France. Blackstone is investing £10 billion in an AI facility in the UK. Iliad has announced a EUR 3 billion push to strengthen European AI infrastructure.

While these initiatives are admirable and signal the right ambition, the focus is largely on physical infrastructure – servers and compute. But this does not address the core issue. Building servers without controlling the software infrastructure is like building roads without a transport strategy.

It’s not about where the servers are. It’s about who controls the stack.

A data center is just a building full of machines. It says nothing about who governs the digital infrastructure running on those machines.

Digital infrastructure defines how data flows, how AI is trained, distributed, and secured. And in this domain, the American tech giants – the hyperscalers – dominate.

Why American tech companies dominate AI

Their success isn’t just because they build the best AI models. It’s because they control the entire digital foundation:

• Amazon AWS – Runs the cloud where most of the world’s AI and SaaS operates.
• Google TensorFlow – Standardized the AI infrastructure layer, attracting researchers and startups alike.
• Microsoft GitHub & Azure – Owns the tools and the cloud where global software is built.

They don’t dominate because they have the most servers – they dominate because they control the building blocks of innovation.

Digital sovereignty requires more than data centers.

To achieve meaningful independence in AI, Europe must do more than just build servers. We must build platforms – the software infrastructure that powers AI, SaaS, and next-generation innovation.

The EU’s AI ambitions will fall short unless they are matched with investments in the foundational layers of technology. Billions spent on AI research or semiconductors will not lead to sovereignty if our most critical workloads still run on U.S.-controlled clouds.

Europe tried before – and failed.

In 2019, the Gaia-X initiative was launched with backing from France and Germany to create a European digital alternative. But instead of delivering a viable technical solution, Gaia-X became another policy framework. It set rules for how hyperscalers should handle European data – but never shifted control over the infrastructure itself. The EU defined the rules, but someone else still owned the playing field.

Future AI needs a digital infrastructure Europe controls.

If Europe is serious about digital sovereignty, it must look beyond data halls and raw compute. We need to build the platforms that make AI, SaaS, and next-generation software possible. The biggest tech success stories weren’t just app developers – they were infrastructure builders:

Snowflake, HashiCorp, Cloudflare – they didn’t dominate headlines with consumer products. They became indispensable by solving the structural problems others ignored.

Europe still has a chance. But it will require vision, courage – and a recognition that infrastructure is not just about location, it’s about control.

At NorNor, we’ve spent the last three years building Heim – a platform designed not just for speed or security, but for sovereignty. Heim is a self-orchestrating cloud layer that removes complexity, isolates risk, and empowers developers and infrastructure providers to build and run critical systems without dependency on hyperscaler architectures.