With President Donald Trump more unpredictable than ever and transatlantic ties reaching new lows, calls are growing louder for Europe to declare independence from US tech.

From Microsoft to Meta, Apple to Uber, cloud computing to AI, much of the day-to-day technology used by Europeans is American.

The risks that brings were hotly debated before Trump returned to power, but now Europe is getting serious — pushing to favour European firms in public contracts and backing European versions of well-known US services.

As Europe faces Trump’s tariffs, and threatens to tax US tech unless the two sides clinch a deal averting all-out trade war, there is a growing sense of urgency.

Tech sovereignty has been front and centre for weeks: the European Union unveiled its strategy to compete in the global artificial intelligence race and is talking about its own payment system to rival Mastercard.

“We have to build up our own capacities when it comes to technologies,” EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen has said, identifying three critical sectors: AI, quantum and semiconductors.

A key concern is that if ties worsen, Washington could potentially weaponise US digital dominance against Europe — with Trump’s administration already taking aim at the bloc’s tech rules.

That is giving fresh impetus to demands by industry, experts and EU lawmakers for Europe to bolster its infrastructure and cut reliance on a small group of US firms.

“Relying exclusively on non-European technologies exposes us to strategic and economic risks,” said EU lawmaker Stephanie Yon-Courtin, who focuses on digital issues, pointing to US limits on semiconductor exports as one example.

‘Buy European’ push

The data paints a stark picture.

Around two-thirds of Europe’s cloud market is in the hands of US titans Amazon, Microsoft and Google, while the share of European cloud providers has been in steady decline, falling to 13 percent in 2022.

Twenty-three percent of the bloc’s total high-tech imports in 2023 came from the United States, second only to China — in everything from aerospace and pharmaceutical tech to smartphones and chips.

Although the idea of a European social media platform to rival Facebook or X is given short shrift, officials believe that in the crucial AI field, the race is far from over.

To boost European AI firms, the EU has called for a “European preference for critical sectors and technologies” in public procurement.

“Incentives to buy European are important,” Benjamin Revcolevschi, chief executive of French cloud provider OVHcloud, told AFP, welcoming the broader made-in-Europe push.

Alison James, European government relations lead at electronics industry association IPC, summed it up: “We need to have what we need for our key industries and our critical industries to be able to make our stuff.”

There are calls for greater independence from US financial technology as well, with European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde advocating a “European offer” to rival American (Mastercard, Visa and Paypal) and Chinese payment systems (Alipay).

Heeding the call, EU capitals have discussed creating a “truly European payment system”.

Industry insiders are also aware building tech sovereignty requires massive investment, at a moment when the EU is pouring money into defence.

In an initiative called EuroStack, digital policy experts said creating a European tech ecosystem with layers including AI would cost 300 billion euros ($340 billion) by 2035.

US trade group Chamber of Progress puts it much higher, at over five trillion euros.

Different values

US Vice President JD Vance has taken aim at tech regulation in denouncing Europe’s social and economic model — accusing it of stifling innovation and unfairly hampering US firms, many of whom have aligned with Trump’s administration.

But for many, the bloc’s values-based rules are another reason to fight for tech independence.

After repeated abuses by US Big Tech, the EU created major laws regulating the online world including the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Much to the chagrin of US digital giants, the EU in 2018 introduced strict rules to protect European users’ data, and last year ushered in the world’s broadest safeguards on AI.

In practice, supporters say the DMA encourages users to discover European platforms — for instance giving users a choice of browser, rather than the default from Apple or Google.

Bruce Lawson of Norwegian web browser Vivaldi said there was “a significant and gratifying increase in downloads in Europe”, thanks in large part to the DMA.

Lawson insists it’s not about being anti-American.

“It’s about weaning ourselves off the dependency on infrastructure that have very different values about data protection,” Lawson said.

Pointing at rules in Europe that “don’t necessarily exist in the United States”, he said users simply “prefer to have their data processed by a European company”.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Good morning! Harvey Weinstein back on trial, Jane Fraser isn’t stressed about Citi’s exposure to trade war, and Fortune’s Michal Lev-Ram talks with Melinda French Gates about divorce and her new book.

– Open book. Anyone who has been through a divorce knows that it’s not just disruptive to the two people untangling their lives from each other, but to everyone they’re connected to. But few women—or men, for that matter—have to consider the ramifications philanthropist Melinda French Gates did when separating from her ex-husband, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. 

In a new book published this week, titled The Next Day, French Gates opens up about her divorce—among other life-changing transitions she has lived through in the last few years. “I loved Bill,” French Gates writes in one of the book’s chapters. “Not only that, but I valued our family life deeply—and I felt enormous responsibility to the foundation we’d started together. Was I going to rip all that apart? Was I going to forgo the future we’d imagined for so long?”

French Gates and Gates started their eponymous foundation back in 2000, with the aim of “creating a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life.” But the duo divorced in 2021, and last year, French Gates stepped away from the $75 billion organization they had built together. Her new focus? Devoting 100% of her time to Pivotal, the investment and advocacy firm she launched in 2015.

In a recent interview with Fortune on her new book, French Gates talked about how these tectonic shifts have changed her as a person and as a leader. For starters, she says she’s gotten a lot more comfortable with being “vulnerable.” Clearly, she’s also gotten a lot more comfortable with being open not just about her work but about herself. 

That said, French Gates says she was sensitive to the ripple effect her divorce could have, including on the foundation. So before announcing the split, the former couple made a phone call to Warren Buffett, their friend and benefactor—the billionaire has given more than $39 billion to the Gates Foundation over the years. 

“I mean, he had made this enormous investment in the foundation,” French Gates told Fortune, “and so whatever decision he would eventually need to make or not make about that was his. We both felt strongly he was one of the first people we needed to tell.”

While notifying Buffett is certainly not on the to-do list of most women getting divorced, French Gates shares plenty of other, more relatable anecdotes about her divorce in the book. One example: pulling over to cry in the car while listening to Willie Nelson’s song, Always on My Mind, right after telling Gates she wanted a divorce.

For more on the interview with French Gates, click here. 

Michal Lev-Ram
michal.levram@fortune.com

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President Donald Trump’s pitch has been bringing jobs back to the U.S. But a growing number of Americans would rather search for employment outside the U.S. amid the changing political landscape. 

Americans made up 8.5% of foreigners interested in U.K. jobs in the first three months of 2025, an increase of 2.4 percentage points compared to a year ago. That makes Americans the fastest-growing U.K.-interested job group, and puts them not far behind leader India (11.3%), according to job search site Indeed. 

The renewed interest from the U.S. comes amid a slew of policy shifts from the White House. 

After Trump’s axing of billions in federal research funding, which has impacted the broader field of academia, more U.S. applicants in scientific research and management were clicking on job postings in Britain, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

A recent survey by the science journal Nature found that 75% of its 1,600 respondents, who were scientists, were mulling leaving the U.S. for Europe or Canada because of President Trump’s actions.

The crackdown has attracted attention beyond the scientific community in some cases, such as recent White House moves against the world-renowned Harvard University. The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multi-year government grants to Harvard because the university refused to comply with policy changes regarding diversity, hiring, and more.  

The brain drain seems to be due to Americans looking for avenues of greater freedom and stability, Richard White, a University of Oxford oncology professor, told Bloomberg.

“Back in the U.S., the U.K. is now considered the stable place to do scientific research. If people have this sense that things could be more stable elsewhere, that’s where they’ll go,” said White, who relocated from New York in 2022.

Europe’s chance

Others have also noticed the tide turn as more people consider their options overseas. 

Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta, warned in a LinkedIn post last month that “many U.S.-based scientists are looking for a Plan B.” This could be Europe’s chance to scoop up top American talent given that the U.S. was “destroying its public research funding system,” LeCun said.

Europe seems prepared to receive the talent outflow. In January, days after Trump was officially sworn in as president, European Central Bank’s Christine Lagard highlighted the opportunity, saying the region could lure some of America’s “disenchanted” talent. 

Paul Graham, a computer scientist and cofounder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, wrote in a post on X that a foreign-born undergraduate student in the U.S. asked him if he should establish his startup in the U.K. given “the random deportations.”

He responded by saying that doing so “would be an advantage in recruiting.” 

“What an interesting twist of history it would be if the U.K. became a hub of intellectual refugees the way the U.S. itself did in the 1930s and 40s. It wouldn’t take much more than what’s already happening,” Graham, who was born in the U.K. and studied in the U.S., said in the post from Tuesday.

European and U.K. challenges

To be sure, the U.K. and Europe have their own fair share of challenges, from low productivity and a smaller startup ecosystem to rising right-wing extremism. Even still, they seem like better options for some candidates than Trump’s America.

While some Americans have shown their eagerness to move from the U.S. through job applications, others have done so by tapping on their eligibility for citizenship elsewhere. 

U.K. Home Office data pointed to a 26% increase in U.S. nationals applying for British citizenship in 2024 compared to a year earlier. And even for those who aren’t qualified to jump ship, the avenue to move to the U.K. seems more tempting now.

“[Some] Americans are now looking for a way to come here short of citizenship, to at least get into the country and leave the U.S.,” Ed Wanambwa, partner at law firm Russell-Cooke, specializing in U.K. immigration law, told Fortune last month. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com