European AI ecosystem worried about new US export restrictions

EU authorities and the artificial intelligence community are concerned that new US export controls, which will apply to most EU member states, could derail plans to train AI models using European supercomputers.

Commissioners Henna Virkkunen and Maroš Šefčovič expressed their concern after the Biden administration on Monday announced the restrictions, which will apply to 17 EU member states.

“We believe it is also in the US economic and security interest that the EU buys advanced AI chips from the US without limitations,” they said in a joint statement.

The EU should be seen as “an economic opportunity for the US, not a security risk,” they said. “We are confident that we can find a way to maintain a secure transatlantic supply chain on AI technology and super computers.”

The US government explained it had taken the decision to ensure that US technology “undergirds global AI use and that adversaries cannot easily abuse advanced AI.”

It listed 18 “key allies and partners” to which no restrictions will apply, including the UK, Norway, and ten EU countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

Every other country will face restrictions on the number of advanced graphics processing unit (GPUs) they can import from the US. These chips are crucial to the large-scale supercomputers that enable the development and training of AI models, as in the EU’s planned AI factories.

EU supercomputers

The US restrictions “may potentially have an impact on the deployment of current and forthcoming supercomputing capacity in several EU member states and their companies,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Science|Business.

“In the coming weeks, we will consult and listen further to the EU member states and industry to collect information and assess the impact of the measure. Based on this feedback, we will share our concerns and comments with the US government,” he added.

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking has commissioned nine EU supercomputers to date, five of which are in countries not considered key allies and partners by the US: Luxembourg, Czechia, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Portugal. Three more planned supercomputers, in Greece, Poland and Hungary, also fall outside the cercle of favoured nations.

Meanwhile, Greece and Luxembourg are due to host two of the EU’s first AI factories, announced in December, offering access to AI-optimised supercomputing resources.

The problem is that European supercomputers are entirely reliant on GPUs from a tiny number of American firms, most often Nvidia, and to a lesser extent AMD and Intel.

“It is safe to say that any restrictions would have a significant impact on the open trade of critical technologies, potentially disrupting global supply chains and innovation ecosystems,” said Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, director general of DigitalEurope.

The trade association is calling for the creation of an EU-US Critical Tech and Dual Use Council to ensure the EU remains a “trusted economic ally” and is not “treated like a security risk.”

This could be an alternative to the existing EU-US Trade and Technology Council, which has produced limited results and risks being sidelined under incoming US president Donald Trump. “This approach would put a sharper focus on critical tech and defence, with fewer working groups zeroing in on AI, cyber harmonisation, dual-use tech, and critical infrastructure,” Bonefeld-Dahl said.

Surprise decision

The decision to apply restrictions to some EU countries and not others came as a surprise to the AI community.

“This divisive approach by the US is undermining the very idea underlying the European Union,” said Holger Hoos, a founder of the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe. “I cannot imagine a reason why Germany would be exempt but not Luxembourg.”

He hopes the inclusion of Luxembourg, where the Commission’s directorate general for technology, DG Connect, has a presence, could serve as a wakeup call for the EU to be much more aggressive in its pursuit of technological sovereignty.

Meanwhile, exempt countries should not be complacent, as the restrictions could be extended in future by the incoming Trump administration, keen to prioritise American interests over its relationship with Europe. “We should be worried,” Hoos said of his home country, Germany.

Even supercomputers that have already secured their supply of GPUs could be affected, he suggested. “If you build an AI factory now, it will be outdated within three years, so it will need upgrades.”

The export controls could have a knock-on effect on many sectors, including the aviation and car industries, which are increasingly reliant on AI technologies and Nvidia chips. “If we lose access to their state-of-the-art chips, that is going to seriously degrade our competitiveness,” Hoos said.

He suggested that Europe does have one lever it could pull: US chipmakers are reliant on lithography machines produced by a single company, ASML, in the Netherlands. However, restricting access to this European technology would be extremely risky. “It’s a distinct possibility that attempting to use this lever may severely damage or destroy one of our European champions.”

Start with software

Before Europe’s supercomputers can do without American components, AI developers must have alternatives to software such as Nvidia’s CUDA, which ties them to specific chips.

“As long as researchers work with CUDA, they’ll use Nvidia,” said Philippe Notton, founder and CEO SiPearl, a company established under the European Processor Initiative, which set out to design a European supercomputing processor. 

European AI research funding should prioritise the development of applications that use alternative software, he said. 

Meanwhile, developing a European GPU will require a significant increase in investment. “The funding in the US is huge to develop competitors to Nvidia.”

Notton believes the American export controls are “very good news” for the sector in Europe, as he hopes it will be a “wakeup call” for policymakers that investment is needed now to avoid ever increasing dependency on US technology.

Meanwhile, US chipmakers are concerned the restrictions will adversely affect their business. In a statement published on its website, Nvidia lambasted the Biden administration’s “misguided” attempt to regulate the sector.

“Restrictions may be warranted but always risk forcing the restricted countries to develop their own technologies. The restricting country risks losing important markets for its vendors and creating new competitors,” said Steve Conway, senior analyst at Intersect360 Research in the US.