by Raphael Dudler | Jul 20, 2026 | europe & ai
SAP has completed its acquisition of Prior Labs, the German pioneer of tabular foundation models, committing over €1 billion over four years to build it into a European frontier AI lab. The target is not language models but the structured data — tables, transactions, records — that businesses actually run on, and that LLMs handle poorly. Founded just 18 months ago, Prior Labs went from research project to billion-euro European AI lab faster than almost any startup on record. gafam.ai reads why this is the clearest example yet of the strategy by which Europe can genuinely win.
by Raphael Dudler | Jul 15, 2026 | europe & ai
The Future of Life Institute’s Summer 2026 AI Safety Index graded nine leading labs — and awarded no grade higher than a C+, to Anthropic. Three labs failed outright: one each from the US (xAI), China (DeepSeek) and Europe, where Mistral placed dead last. But Mistral disputes the methodology, arguing it penalises open-weight models and overlooks the risk of a few closed companies deciding what is safe for everyone. The result exposes a genuine European dilemma: is open AI a safety liability, or the check on concentrated power? gafam.ai reads the dissonance.
by Raphael Dudler | Jul 9, 2026 | europe & ai
On July 8, France’s Mistral released Robostral Navigate, a physical-AI model that lets robots navigate complex environments using a single camera and basic language prompts — hardware-agnostic, trained entirely in simulation, and already tied to major European industrial customers. Alongside an open-weight frontier model entering July early access and a €4 billion data-center buildout, it reveals a deliberate strategy: Europe’s clearest AI champion is not trying to out-scale OpenAI at the chatbot frontier, but competing on sovereignty, openness and physical AI. After a month of documenting European dependency, gafam.ai reads what Europe is actually building.
by Raphael Dudler | Jul 1, 2026 | europe & ai
In 32 days — on August 2, 2026 — three enforcement mechanisms of the EU AI Act activate simultaneously: Article 50 transparency obligations, penalty powers over general-purpose AI providers, and full national market-surveillance authority. But the Digital Omnibus deal of May 7 quietly deferred the Act’s most demanding high-risk obligations to December 2027. The result is a law that arrives in 32 days with real teeth in some areas and a postponed bite in others. gafam.ai maps what actually switches on — for GAFAM, and for every publisher using AI, including this one.
by Raphael Dudler | Jun 25, 2026 | europe & ai
Two developments this week reshape Europe’s access to frontier cyber-AI. Anthropic is offering the EU access to its Mythos cybersecurity model — its first expansion beyond the US and UK — with talks with the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA ongoing. Simultaneously, OpenAI is giving nine major UK banks access to its GPT-5.5-Cyber tool, filling the gap left by Anthropic’s tightly restricted Mythos. After weeks of watching Europe locked out of American AI, the direction has reversed — but the terms deserve scrutiny. gafam.ai’s European analysis.
by Raphael Dudler | Jun 19, 2026 | europe & ai
The 52nd G7 Summit closed today at Évian-les-Bains after three days of negotiations under French presidency. Nine declarations were adopted. A dedicated working lunch on “Ensuring the safe, rapid and effective deployment of artificial intelligence” brought G7 leaders together with business executives. President Macron held the closing press conference. President Trump defended his Iran deal as allies pressed for details. gafam.ai examines what the Évian outcomes actually mean for European AI policy — and what they conspicuously omit.
