Palantir’s head of U.K. and Europe, Louis Mosley, told a recent interview that the continent’s tentative attitude toward artificial intelligence could lead to a repeat of its earlier missed chances during the rise of the internet.
A stark contrast with the United States
Mosley highlighted that, two decades ago, Europe and the United States were comparable in terms of GDP per capita, market depth and the scale of their largest firms. Since then, the United States has enjoyed compounded growth while Europe has shown only modest progress. The internet era produced few European champions, with the semiconductor firm ASML standing out as an exception. Mosley argued that AI will be even more transformative, and that Europe’s “wait-and-see” mindset may leave it trailing behind.
Palantir as a barometer for AI adoption
According to Mosley, Palantir functions as a clear indicator of how quickly an economy embraces AI. The company supplies a governance framework that enables governments and corporations to run large-language models and autonomous agents across sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing and defence. Its platform is model-agnostic, allowing clients to deploy solutions from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google’s Gemini, Grok, open-weight models or even Chinese alternatives, and to fine-tune them on proprietary data. While Palantir reports robust commercial revenue growth in the United States, it currently serves roughly a thousand customers in Europe, far below the potential market size.
Political pushback and its impact
Palantir’s work in law-enforcement and defence has sparked controversy across the U.K. and broader Europe. Critics point to contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Israeli Defence Forces, and the U.K.’s National Health Service as sources of ethical concern. Mosley dismissed these disputes as distractions from the core benefits of AI, arguing that policymakers should not let unrelated foreign contracts dictate the timing of domestic services, such as medical procedures.
He also drew a parallel with past attacks on energy-intensive technologies, noting that bitcoin miners faced similar criticism a decade ago for electricity consumption. Today, many of those miners have shifted toward AI high-performance computing, encountering comparable scrutiny over power use.
The broader stakes for European productivity
Mosley contended that AI will not only reshape jobs but also liberate professionals—nurses, police officers and others—from repetitive paperwork, thereby boosting overall productivity. He warned that the greatest obstacle to AI’s promise is a political failure to communicate its societal advantages. “You’re making all the same mistakes again,” he said, emphasizing the need for a balanced narrative that highlights AI’s positive impact.
Why it matters
Europe’s approach to AI will influence the continent’s competitiveness in the coming decade. If hesitancy persists, the region could fall further behind the United States in creating high-value tech firms and integrating AI into public services. Conversely, overcoming political resistance and embracing AI-driven efficiency could unlock significant productivity gains and position Europe as a leader in responsible technology deployment.
