Alibaba's Joe Tsai says open-source AI is Europe's best bet for tech independence

Alibaba board chairman Joe Tsai said at the Wave by Vento conference in Turin, Italy that open-source AI is Europe's best way to cut reliance on Chinese and American tech. He called on Europe to build its own computing infrastructure for training and running AI models.

He noted that no country wants to depend fully on another's technology, as supplies could be cut off when things change. Europe should train and run models on local infrastructure and use its own industrial data to build an edge.

Tsai also sees promise in Europe's new cloud providers running data centers with AI chips. He said China pushes open-source models and public research, while US firms like OpenAI and Anthropic mainly offer closed models. US closed labs, he added, no longer publish papers because they want to stay closed.