VivaTech 2026, the show’s tenth edition, filled Hall 7 of the Paris Expo, and I spent three days inside it, away from the heat wave that hit the French capital. The official slogan was “Artificial Intelligence: impact, not illusion”; the real argument, from start to finish, was about Europe, and whether it can still catch America and China in the AI race. That contest runs on two tracks: the commercial one over models, chips and customers, and the one that mattered more here, sovereignty, meaning whether Europe controls its own AI, data and computing power or depends on the other two giants.
LLM-pilled
Almost every leading AI today, American or Chinese, runs on the same idea: large language models, the technology behind ChatGPT, which work by predicting the next word. Yann LeCun, one of the godfathers of modern AI, told the audience the whole industry has swallowed the LLM pill (a nod to The Matrix), and that no big leap is coming while everyone uses near-identical technology; he has bet his new company, AMI Labs, on a different foundation he calls world models, AI that learns how the physical world actually works.
The takeaway: the experts cannot agree whether the next advance should improve today’s AI or replace it, and Europe is quietly betting on replacement, since a fresh start may be its only route to winning.
What AI cannot build
The strongest sessions were about the limits: what today’s AI still cannot do, and where humans keep the edge, which is where the next opportunities stand. Peter Steinberger, whose tool OpenClaw helped push AI “agents”, software that carries out tasks on its own, into the mainstream, said AI handles coding well because code can be checked, while taste is the thing humans will keep doing better for a long time yet. Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, made the optimist’s case, expecting people to pay a premium for visibly human-made things, down to the labour of love in a good croissant (you will find a recipe in After Hours).
The takeaway: the opportunity lies in the work today’s AI cannot do well: judgement, taste and the human touch.
There is no you, digitally
Sovereignty has a personal edge: a country that does not control its citizens’ data controls very little, and nor do the citizens themselves. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, and John Bruce of Inrupt showed Charlie, a personal assistant that holds your data and hides your details so a model can help you without learning who you are; Ledger’s chief executive Pascal Gauthier was blunter, saying that online there is “no digital you”, just data anyone can copy, with AI making attacks cheap and fast while defence stays slow and expensive.
The takeaway: where your data is held, and who can read it, is both a national-security question and a personal one; the tools to regain control already exist, and adoption is what is missing.
To infinity and beyond
Space ran through the week too. The Exploration Company, the Franco-German firm building the privately funded Nyx cargo capsule, has raised more than €200m (about $230m), Europe’s largest space round, which loops back to AI: orbital data centres are one way to feed the industry’s appetite for computing power by tapping the sun’s energy directly, and Hélène Huby wants the firm to become the Airbus of the new space industry.
The takeaway: in space, unlike in AI models, Europe is close to the front, and the same appetite for computing power driving AI is now reaching into orbit.
Where picks and shovels meet regulation
In a gold rush the sure money is in picks and shovels, and in AI that means the chips and the machines that make them. Europe holds a winning card here: ASML, run by chief executive Christophe Fouquet, is the only company in the world that builds the extreme-ultraviolet lithography machines that etch the circuitry onto the most advanced chips. Set against that, former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg noted the four biggest US tech firms are expected to spend more than $700bn on AI infrastructure in 2026, the equivalent of the entire UK defence budget every five to six weeks.
The takeaway: Europe owns the one tool the whole AI industry depends on, the machines that make the chips, but risks burying that advantage under its own red tape.
For me, the bluntest warning of the week came from Enrico Letta, the former Italian prime minister behind the EU’s 2024 single-market report: simplify the rules and pool the money, or spend VivaTech 2032 debating whether Europe becomes a colony of America or of China.
That was the light read, the full issue is here.
Wirelessly yours,
Ziad Matar
Co-founder, Tokenando
Editor-in-chief, The Compute
After Hours
The Business France Vision Golfe 2026 programme ran on the sidelines of VivaTech, and although I could not attend the daytime conference and meetings, I made it to an elegant evening reception at the Palais Galliera, which houses the Paris fashion museum. The soundtrack that evening opened with the tenor Nabil Rashdi (Naestro on Instagram) performing a thundering Nessun Dorma. We wound down later at Cravan, a great bar on Boulevard Saint-Germain where they mix the classics and offer their own bottled cocktails. The Boulevardier was exceptional… with Night of Arara playing in the background.
I finally saw Paris properly on Saturday morning, with a leisurely run along the banks of the Seine and back past the Eiffel Tower, no tourists in sight except a few early birds, just like me.
While we do not have Alexis Ohanian’s croissant recipe as such, here is a vintage version to try next weekend, courtesy of the one and only Julia Child.