China is pitching its AI models to Europe, but is it enough to avoid 2-horse race with US?
As the United States and China consolidate their dominance in artificial intelligence, attention is turning to whether Europe can carve out a distinct third pole – a “G3” – or remain in Washington’s technological orbit. The race is rapidly evolving into a contest over international order. In June, Washington signed up 10 more partners for its Pax Silica framework – designed to secure supply…
As the United States and China solidify their leadership in artificial intelligence, Europe is positioning itself as a potential "third pole" in the AI landscape, or a "G3," to avoid becoming part of a US-China technological dominance. Beijing is actively pitching its open-source AI models to European capitals as a cost-effective alternative to US tech.
China's ambassador to Britain, Zheng Zeguang, recently called for cooperation on this issue in an article for The Guardian, highlighting Chinese models like DeepSeek as "global public goods" that could reduce barriers to innovation. In June, China's ambassador to the European Union, Cai Run, made a similar appeal at the Europe Forum in Brussels, suggesting that China's open-source AI advantages could complement Europe's strengths in basic research and regulation.
According to Cui Hongjian, a research fellow at Beijing Foreign Studies University's Country and Area Studies Academy, a "G2" structure involving the US and China appears to be forming, while the possibility of a "G3" remains open. Beijing wants a "balanced trilateral structure" with Europe, rather than facing the US alone. However, while open-source models may offer some benefits, a genuine third pole would require owning the entire AI infrastructure stack, from chips to cloud services.
European companies are already adopting Chinese AI models to cut development costs and reduce reliance on US technology, but the infrastructure gap is significant. Sebastian Contin Trillo-Figueroa, a geopolitics strategist, warns that Europe may not be able to match the US and China's capabilities in the short term, but suggests that Europe's leverage lies in high-value industrial assets and proprietary data sets in sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and aerospace.
James Downes, director of the Europe-Asia programme at the US-based Centre for Explanatory Research and Scientific Prediction, notes that Europe's heavy reliance on US cloud infrastructure limits its options. To prevent shrinking relative to the US and China, Downes advises Europe to shift focus from ethics to machines and invest in computing power, capital, and scale.
Written by urgent.news from South China Morning Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
