Joe Tsai says open-source AI is Europe’s only path to sovereignty

Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s chairman and co-founder, said at the Wave event in Italy that Europe’s only route to technological sovereignty in AI is adopting open-source models. He said companies could download the weights, run the model on their own infrastructure and train it with internal data, keeping sensitive information within the organization. Tsai also said Chinese AI companies share innovation, while U.S. laboratories do not do so in the same way.

The proposal comes as Europe remains dependent on technology from the U.S. and China. According to Xataka, the two countries control about 90% of the world’s AI computing infrastructure. Alibaba has a vested interest because it develops the open Qwen model, and Chinese models could simply replace dependence on one supplier with dependence on another. Open models therefore offer greater control and flexibility, but do not remove Europe’s shortage of infrastructure and competitive homegrown models.