Europe is back and means business in the artificial intelligence race. That’s the sentiment echoed at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris as France President Macron touted a $112.8 billion investment in AI. The massive investment comes as four of the biggest US tech giants plan to spend $325 billion to further strengthen their AI ambitions in 2025.
France’s $112.8 billion underscores Europe’s desire to take on the US and China, which have dominated the AI debate on innovations and investment in recent years. For starters, the US is receiving praise as part of the $500 billion Stargate project as China appears to have an edge on innovation following DeepSeek’s revelation of cost-effective AI models.
Critics of Europe have long argued that the continent has overregulated the tech sector, hindering innovation. Nevertheless, some in the technology sector believe that Europe is headed in the right direction, even though that perception hasn’t completely changed.
“As a European region, at least, we are starting to see global leaders emerge, and that’s the thing we really need,” Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video company Synthesia, told CNBC in an interview on Monday.
While there appears to be a tussle or fierce competition between nations to spearhead the AI revolution, China has made it clear that it is willing to work with other countries. Beijing insists it is willing and ready to promote development, safeguard security, and share achievements in the field of artificial intelligence.
According to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special representative, Zhang Guoqing, AI has become an essential driving force for the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. China has always participated in global cooperation and governance on AI with a highly responsible attitude.
Corporations between nations instead of competing against each other to control the spoils are key to unlocking the full advantages of the AI revolution. Likewise, economists at Goldman Sachs expect widespread adoption of generative AI to raise US labour productivity by 15% over the next 10 years. It is also likely to unlock about $4.5 trillion in annual US GDP.
AI economic benefits are anticipated to flow to hardware and infrastructure providers early on. Later, they will spread to platform and application developers, and finally, they will manifest as increases in productivity and efficiency throughout the industry as a whole. According to the Goldman Sachs team, the US AI investment cycle will peak at 2% of GDP before declining as the compute costs of running AI queries and training AI models decline. Investment in AI software was expected to rise gradually over time as end-user adoption rose.
According to the Goldman Sachs team’s projections, the US will begin to see productivity gains from generative AI technology in 2027, with the impact peaking in the early 2030s. According to these projections, the US timeline is a few years ahead of other developed markets and important emerging market nations.
“Given that potential cost savings from generative AI are large and the marginal cost of deployment once applications are developed will likely be very small, we see the adoption of generative AI as more of a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if,” Joseph Briggs, co-leader of the Global Economics team.
According to Briggs, the kinds of work tasks that generative AI can automate would save several thousand dollars annually per worker, and Goldman Sachs Research continues to predict that AI adoption will increase in the medium term.
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8. IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 28
IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) offers high-performance computing solutions, including artificial intelligence cloud services. Brett Knoblauch of Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated a Buy rating on the stock on February 13th, with a $23 price target. The buy rating comes on the heels of the company delivering record revenue of $53.7 million and operating cash flow of $18.7 million in the fiscal second quarter of 2025.
While IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) is best known for its bitcoin mining operations, it’s also strategically shifting towards high-performance computing in offering AI cloud services. IREN is also targeting artificial intelligence opportunities backed by its new 600MW Sweetwater 2 site, which is expected to create a 2GW data center hub. The company’s AI cloud service revenue significantly improved in the second quarter totaling $0.8 million.