Open-weight Chinese AI models gain foothold in Europe despite Brussels’ trepidation
Chinese models will be ‘significant’ for European firms, as their ‘performance and efficiency are increasingly competitive’, analyst says European businesses are increasingly weighing whether cheap but capable Chinese artificial intelligence systems represent a new threat to the continent’s technological sovereignty or a practical tool to strengthen it. While using Chinese technology might seem counterintuitive to Europe’s goals, running open-weight Chinese models on local servers can actually give firms greater operational control than relying on proprietary US services, according to a Germany-based consultant. “A Chinese-developed open-weight model operated on European infrastructure, with data remaining under the company’s control, may in some respects offer greater operational sovereignty than consuming a proprietary foreign [model] that can be changed, repriced or withdrawn remotely,” said Volker Pfirsching, a Munich-based partner at management consultancy Arthur D. Little, in an interview this week. “Sovereignty should not simply be equated with the nationality of the supplier,” Pfirsching said.
