Europe accelerates push to reduce reliance on U.S. technology

European governments are accelerating efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. technology providers, driven in part by the 2018 CLOUD Act which allows American law enforcement to access data stored abroad. The shift remains uneven, with some public agencies embracing alternatives while others maintain contracts with U.S. companies. France recently moved its Health Data Hub off Microsoft Azure and awarded the contract to Scaleway, a French cloud provider. Scaleway was also among four winners of a €180 million sovereign cloud tender from the European Commission. Meanwhile, France and other European nations are replacing Windows with Linux and Microsoft's office suite with open-source alternatives like LibreOffice. The push faces significant hurdles. Public contracts have benefited European cloud providers including Clever Cloud, OVHCloud, and STACKIT, but private companies have been slower to switch. German airline Lufthansa and Air France both chose Elon Musk's Starlink for in-flight Wi-Fi, and some European search engines that were promoted as alternatives still rely on underlying U.S. technology. Despite the challenges, European AI startups are finding opportunity in the trend. Mistral AI has reportedly seen revenue growth as an alternative to OpenAI, and the Canadian and German governments are backing Cohere's merger with Aleph Alpha to build a transatlantic AI company.