Welcome to ICYMI – a weekly snapshot of European news stories that have given me pause for thought. ICYMI is a chance for you to go beyond the front-page headlines and find out what other stories may be worthy of your attention. This week:
- Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, have collectively lost $209 billion this year
- Europe’s tech innovators want to reduce reliance on the US
- Project Europe targets the continent’s young entrepreneurs
Two months into the presidency of Donald Trump and his administration’s frenetic round of disruptive legislation is starting to have economic consequences.
Capital reports that since Trump’s inauguration, five prominent billionaires, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have collectively lost $209 billion.
Shares in Elon Musk’s two most high-profile ventures, Tesla and X, have been tumbling. On Monday, March 10, Tesla’s stock lost 15% in a single day, and the businessman’s net worth has declined by $148 billion since January.
Yet he is not the only billionaire entrepreneur who has taken a hit. According to Bloomberg calculations, Amazon’s shares have fallen 14% since January, stripping Jeff Bezos of $29 billion, while Sergei Brin, co-founder of Google, and CEO of Alphabet Inc., has seen his fortune decrease by $22 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta/Facebook, is faring better, down only $5 billion since January, while longtime friend of the American president, Bernard Arnault, has also lost $5 billion since his pal’s inauguration.
European tech plans to go it alone
The US administration’s confrontational approach to global trade is sparking a reset in the European tech sector.
Techcrunch reports on how a broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of the continent’s tech industry is calling for “radical action” from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned (ie US) digital infrastructure and services.
In an open letter to European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the EU’s digital chief, Henna Virkkunen, more than 80 signatories (representing around 100 organisations) said they want regional lawmakers to “rethink current support efforts so that they are centred on fostering uptake of homegrown alternatives with the strongest commercial potential — from apps, platforms, and AI models to chips, computing, storage, and connectivity.”
Companies spanning areas including cloud, telecoms, defence, along with several regional business and startup associations, have put their names to the letter, urging the bloc to switch its tech strategy onto a quasi-war footing by committing to support “sovereign digital infrastructure.”
The rallying call to put European tech first — backed by companies including Airbus, Element, OVHCloud, Murena, Nextcloud, and Proton, to name a few — is a response to the growing gulf between the European continent and the US over issues such trade and security.
Meanwhile Sifted has the latest on “Project Europe”, a fund backed by 20VC, Berlin-based Point Nine and New York-based Adjacent along with over 120 tech founders from companies like Klarna, Mistral, ElevenLabs and Shopify. The fund will support founders under 25 by providing mentorship and investing in 10 to 20 of them, offering €200k in exchange for 6.66% equity.
British VC Harry Stebbings of 20VC, who was a key catalyst in the development of the project, said the fund, which came together in about three weeks, is to “change the narrative” around how Europe builds companies and innovation, and help fuel Europe’s next €100bn company.
UK needs more digital growth
In London, the British government has set a new strategic steer for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) after saying last year the regulator was not doing enough to promote economic growth in the digital and tech sectors.
Reuters quotes CEO Sarah Cardell who said that while the CMA’s commitment to promoting competition was critical, it also had to change how it went about its work to boost business and investor confidence.
She said the CMA would prioritise interventions which had a “clear and direct impact for UK consumers and businesses”, and it would consider whether it was best placed to act.
Quantum and AI firsts
Finally, a couple of under the radar tech stories, which may prove to have a significant impact in the long term.
Equal1, the Irish quantum computing company claimed this week it has made history by unveiling the world’s first silicon-based quantum server. The company has developed the technology using the same semiconductor processes that power microchips. However, the server – named Bell-1 after Belfast-born physicist John Stewart Bell – has significantly lower power usage than other quantum machines and can be plugged into a standard electrical socket, according to the company.
Lastly, Les Echos has an update about Chinese tech giant Baidu which just released two aggressively priced multimodal AI models. ERNIE X1, Baidu’s first reasoning model, matches the capabilities of top Chinese competitor DeepSeek’s R1 at half the price.
It is possible we are witnessing the start of a global AI price war that could force Western competitors to slash rates, democratising access to advanced AI worldwide.
