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Europe may never catch up to the US in AI, Pierre Wunsch, governor of the National Bank of Belgium, said on Thursday. Based on the current rate of investments into AI on the continent, Wunsch predicted Europe will be the world’s “number three at best” in AI.
Speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC, Wunsch acknowledged the role AI spending has in fueling GDP growth in the US, saying that Europe “certainly feels it needs to play catch up. The question is, can we?”
Private investment into AI in the US hit $109 billion in 2024, according to Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI — nearly 12 times more than China’s $9.3 billion and 24 times the UK’s $4.5 billion. In August, UBS projected that global AI spending will reach $375 billion in 2025 and soar to $500 billion by 2026.
Wunsch, who is also a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, noted that European investment in AI was severely lagging. “Europe is not playing in that game.”
Speaking more broadly about Europe’s attitude to risk, Wunsch said, “we want to be in control. We put more emphasis on redistribution. And so we don’t like the Californian model, ‘moving fast and breaking things,’ that’s very un-European.”
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Diving deeper into the differences between Europe’s approach and the US, Wunsch said the continent now faces a challenge in how to manage increased imports from China in light of US tariffs.
“That’s probably a question going forward. I mean, is the US administration going to put consistent pressure on Europe to sort of choose a camp, which of course would put us in a very difficult situation? That’s probably above my pay grade,” Wunsch said.
The central banker also said that he did not see investor wariness in the dollar as a result of the Trump administration’s trade policies and economic uncertainty translating into the currency “losing its reference status on the world stage.”