On the June 12th 2026, one of European tech’s hottest debates shifted from policy papers to a reality.
The need to develop “sovereign” products and reduce dependence on US big tech was laid bare when the Trump administration ordered Silicon Valley’s Anthropic to prevent foreign nationals using its most powerful AI models.
This live demonstration of the so-called “digital kill switch,” where US providers limit the use of strategic technologies to other countries, served as a wake-up call for many around Europe, showing the need to build more homegrown solutions.
In our most recent Sifted Talks, in partnership with workplace solutions builder Proton, our panellists discussed how company builders on this side of the Atlantic are migrating to a more sovereign tech stack, and what needs to change to reduce our reliance on the US.
Our panel of experts included:
- Kai Zenner, digital policy advisor at the European Parliament
- Cristina Caffarra, economist and chair of tech sovereignty policy initiative EuroStack
- Raphael Auphan, chief operating officer at Proton
- Fabrizio Pirondini, cofounder and CEO of satellite data startup Xoople
Risk reduction
While the Anthropic news served as a high-profile example of Europe’s vulnerabilities around relying on US products, the continent’s tech leaders have been pushing a migration to home-grown solutions for some time.
“It’s changed in the last two years. CTOs and CIOs (chief information officers) are being asked by their boards to drive initiatives,” says Auphan.
“CIOs are now really looking at their technology stack, saying, ‘How much depends on foreign providers? The kill switch is a possibility, so how do I put in place a programme where, within one or two years, I can get a strong reduction in risk.’”
Geopolitics has been a big driver of this urgency to migrate away from US-made tech, he adds, citing the example of Denmark, where company leaders have accelerated their tech sovereignty push in the wake of President Trump’s threats to annex Greenland.
“We saw a 100% rise in signups in Denmark for our solution, so really we can thank the current US administration for placing the sovereignty question at the centre of CIOs' minds,” says Auphan.
But the scale of the task, to migrate off US-made tech, is vast. A recent Proton survey of publicly listed European companies found that 74% rely on email services made in the US.
“When you are at this level, it's not a partnership, it's a full dependency.” - Auphan
A different narrative
Accelerating the push towards European tech sovereignty will require a mindset shift, to focus not just on the risks of reliance on US products, but also on the strengths of our own ecosystem, according to Caffarra.
“I think that the motivation needs to be one of assertion of European capabilities, of our own power, of our own strength,” she says. “We need to understand that Europe is super powerful, and we are not going to be belittled.”
Caffarra adds that a genuine shift towards more sovereign European technology won’t come from top-down policy directives from Brussels or other governments, but needs to be led by the market and stronger demand to buy home-grown products.
“Unless the demand side wakes up to where we are, and the fact that they [European companies] need to play a part, then there won't be enough of a shift,” she says.
“You need to want to do it first, and we don't see enough wanting to do it.” - Caffarra
The hard reality
For those actually building startups, it’s not always as simple as “wanting” to buy European tech infrastructure. Pirondini describes how for his company Xoople, which combines satellites, cloud, big data and AI, it’s often not a choice to use solutions from the US.
“As a business, we need the right tools for the job,” he says. “The reality for the kind of global project we're doing is that the only partners that have that kind of technology at that scale are US partners. We have, unfortunately, mostly US partners, because there are no alternatives.”
Pirondini argues that, if Europe is going to be competitive in building solutions that actually make sense for its founders to use, the continent’s tech scene needs more than just a mindset shift: it needs a big injection of money.
“The economics of developing solutions that fight against the biggest companies on earth from Europe cannot be done by shared will alone,” he says.
“We need European capital deployed at the scale at which the Americans deploy their own capital.” - Pirondini
Redirecting capital
Caffarra argues that Europe could accelerate its push to develop sovereign tech by unlocking the huge amounts of money held in the continent’s pension funds
“There are enormous capital pools out there. I was in a room with 18 pension funds, accounting for 3.8tn in assets under management. They can fluidify that capital, much of it is there. Europeans save twice as much as Americans,” she says, adding that, currently, large European fund managers too quickly default to backing US tech.
“We send €300bn to the US every year for VC investment. This is the unacceptable face of what Europe is doing now.”
When it comes to public investment coming from governments, Europe also needs to be more strategic with where it places its bets, rather than simply pouring money into exciting, but speculative, technologies, according to Zenner.
“We are just basically pulling out our money, throwing it at quantum computing, but without really thinking: ‘Which part of quantum computing are we doing well in? Where are the European companies that are leading?’” he says. “Why are shooting a lot of money in areas where it doesn't really make sense from a strategic and economic perspective?”
Caffarra says that, while Europe is unlikely to match the eye-watering levels of investment into frontier AI in the US, there are still many technologies where the continent can play more of a leading role, if it acts quickly in redirecting the capital it has available.
“We have an enormous catch up to do, but at the same time it is possible, because we are not poor, we are not defenseless, we are not hapless, we are not technically stupid. We can do it.”- Caffarra.
