U.S. AI Controls Unexpectedly Spur European De-Americanization; Siemens, Renault Turn to China's DeepSeek and Qwen

U.S. national security restrictions on artificial intelligence services have triggered a supply chain restructuring in Europe as major corporations shift away from exclusive reliance on American technology, according to executives speaking at the VivaTech expo in Paris last week. Siemens CEO Cedrik Neike said companies need flexibility and that resilience comes from diversification rather than isolation. The catalyst was the U.S. government's recent decision requiring San Francisco-based Anthropic to suspend foreign nationals' access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. Orange CEO Christel Heydemann said the restrictions demonstrate the need for Europe to control its AI services. Siemens disclosed its multi-model roster now includes China's DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen models alongside Nvidia's Nemotron and several U.S. and European models. Renault Group is pursuing a similar strategy with partners including Google, Microsoft, Mistral, DeepSeek and Dataiku. Orange explained that running Chinese models locally on European infrastructure keeps data within the country. OVHcloud CEO Octave Klaba noted Chinese models now lead the open-source field after U.S. players shifted to closed-source. Rising token costs are also pressuring strategy, with Orange management focused on cost per token through year-end. EU officials have long sought digital autonomy, but business leaders are building a multi-polar supply system rather than decoupling.