GPUaaS is reinforcing the illusion of European AI sovereignty

Europe is pouring billions into AI development and infrastructure. GPU (graphics processing units) access is expanding rapidly through cloud platforms and GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) providers, becoming a key enabler of AI development and deployment.

The underlying assumption is straightforward: scale compute, and you scale capability.

Yet, despite the efforts made by EU Member States, from sovereign cloud initiatives to federated data infrastructure, the European AI landscape remains constrained by a critical bottleneck: dependence on GPUs largely designed by non-European players such as NVIDIA and manufactured by Asian foundries, primarily Taiwan’s TSMC, over which Europe has no chance of chip independence at either layer in the short term.

This has direct implications for European technological sovereignty.

The computer boom

The semiconductor industry is undergoing a structural boom, driven by accelerating demand for AI workloads, including agentic systems, robotics, and automated operations.

According to Deloitte, the global semiconductor market is projected to ...