In Episode 188 of the AIAW Podcast, we’re joined by Christian Landgren, Co-Founder and CPTO of Berget AI, for a conversation about what it will take for Europe to build AI on its own terms. As AI becomes critical infrastructure for companies, governments, healthcare, and society, the question of who controls the models, compute, data, and underlying infrastructure is becoming increasingly important. We’ll explore the case for European AI sovereignty, how organizations can use powerful global and open-weight models while keeping sensitive data on European infrastructure, and why data ownership, open APIs, interoperability, and freedom from vendor lock-in matter. We’ll also discuss sovereign AI clouds, Sweden’s potential role in sustainable AI infrastructure, smarter multi-model architectures for agentic AI, and what public procurement needs to change to support European innovation. Finally, we’ll look at the bigger question of whether open AI ecosystems can help Europe remain technologically competitive while preserving security, sustainability, and control over its digital future.
