It has companies such as Mistral, ASML, Siemens, SAP, Airbus, Orange, Dassault Systèmes, Schneider Electric, Nokia, Ericsson and many others that understand the real economy better than Silicon Valley understands it.
Europe also has the anxiety. Reuters reported from Paris that executives from Siemens, Renault, Orange and ChapsVision already use a mix of U.S., Chinese and European AI models to avoid depending on any single provider. Recent U.S. restrictions on access to Anthropic models gave that worry a practical shape. A company can build around an American model and then discover that access depends on a government decision in Washington.¹
That is not simply a vendor problem. It is a sovereignty problem.
The European Union knows it. Its AI Continent plan proposes to mobilize €200 billion for AI, including €20 billion for up to five AI gigafactories and 19 AI factories to support startups, industry and research.² That is serious money. But Europe’s weakness is not only money. It is compute, speed, energy, fragmentation and the lack of enough homegrown infrastructure tied to homegrown models and customers.
Canada has a different problem. It isn’t large enough to become a third AI superpower by itself. It can’t outspend the United States. It can’t match China’s state-directed scale. But Canada has something the AI economy increasingly needs: clean power, cold geography, land, water, political stability, rule of law, proximity to both the United States and Europe, and deep AI research roots in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton.
That combination has become a strategic asset.
Canada has already begun to move. Its Sovereign AI Compute Strategy is designed to expand domestic AI compute capacity and protect Canadian data and intellectual property. Ottawa is seeking proposals for large-scale sovereign AI data centers with planned capacities above 100 megawatts, with preference for projects that include Indigenous participation, minimize environmental harm and use Canadian partners and supply chains.³ Canada has also laid out a broader electricity strategy aimed at doubling grid capacity by 2050, a goal driven in part by rising demand from AI data centers, industrial growth and electrification.⁴
This is where Canada and Europe should see each other clearly.
Europe needs compute that isn’t wholly dependent on American or Chinese companies. Canada needs a strategy that is larger than leasing electricity to whichever hyperscaler arrives first with a check. Together they could build something neither can build as well alone: a democratic compute layer.
Call it a Canada-Europe Allied Compute Compact.
The compact wouldn’t be anti-American. That would be foolish. The United States will remain Canada’s closest ally and Europe’s indispensable security partner.