It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Single-dose of ayahuasca’s active compound could help ease depression, research finds
Copyright Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
One dose of the active compound in ayahuasca significantly improves depressive symptoms in early stages of a clinical trial, according to a new study.
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a potent natural psychedelic and a primary psychoactive component of ayahuasca, could work as an antidepressant, a study published in Nature has found.
Researchers at Imperial College London conducted a trial that demonstrated DMT’s potential to ease symptoms of depression.
Intravenous DMT has a short half-life – the time it takes for the concentration of a drug in your bloodstream to drop by half after administration – of around five minutes due to rapid metabolism.
This allows for shorter therapeutic sessions, potentially improving patient convenience and reducing costs, the research noted.
The trial is a phase 2a clinical trial, meaning a pilot study designed to provide preliminary evidence of a drug’s efficacy and to determine the most effective dose for future trials.
The number of participants is typically small, between 30 and 50, to minimise exposure to potentially ineffective treatment and to focus on a targeted patient group.
The research team in London included 34 participants who had lived with depression for an average of 10.5 years. They were randomised so that 17 received the placebo, and 17 received the active substance.
Participants received a single 21.5 milligram dose of DMT or placebo infused over 10 minutes, alongside psychotherapeutic support.
After a two-week follow-up period, those treated with DMT showed a significantly greater reduction in depressive symptoms than those who received the placebo. The effects persisted up to three months after the start of the trial.
The researchers found that DMT was well-tolerated, with no serious adverse events. Most side effects were mild or moderate, the most common being pain where the patients received the injection.
Independent experts cautioned that, while the findings are promising, further research is needed to assess the treatment’s efficacy.
“In terms of safety concerns, there may be a risk of negative experiences during the psychedelic experience that could be frightening or traumatising,” said James Stone, professor of psychiatry, Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
He added that certain groups of people may be more susceptible to these types of effects, and further studies are required to identify how often they occur.
Need for new depression drugs?
Approximately 332 million people in the world have depression, according to the World Health Organization. In Europe, more than 25 million people are estimated to live with depressive disorders.
The most common treatments include antidepressant medications and psychotherapy. However, the study authors noted that many patients experience insufficient improvement or unacceptable side effects from selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants.
Previous research has shown that antidepressants achieve response rates of between 40 and 60 percent. Around 20 to 30 percent of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) develop treatment-resistant depression, meaning they don’t respond to at least two different antidepressant medications.
The study authors argued that there is an urgent need for innovative and more effective treatments and suggested that psychedelics have emerged as a promising candidate.
No psychedelic treatments like DMT and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) currently hold full marketing authorisation from the European Medicines Agency for clinical use in Europe.
In most countries, psychedelic treatments are limited to research trials, compassionate use programmes, which allow patients with serious or life-threatening conditions to access investigational drugs outside clinical trials when no approved treatments exist, and they can't join a trial.
The Czech Republic became the first European Union country to legalise medical psilocybin – commonly known as “magic mushrooms” – for psychotherapy from 1 January 2026.
Under the new framework, the treatment is offered to people resistant to traditional depression treatments, suffering from cancer-related, severe non-psychotic, or life-threatening mental deterioration.
It can only be administered by certified psychiatrists and clinical psychotherapists with specialised psychedelic training, and in approved facilities.
NATO Prepares to Demonstrate its Greenland Defense Plans
NATO is to conduct a series of integrated exercises to test and exercise plans for the defense of the High North and Greenland. A keynote of the plans is the engagement of numerous NATO nations but also use of NATO command and control structures.
British involvement in the plan was announced by British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at the Munich Security Conference last week. The United Kingdom will deploy a Royal Navy carrier strike group (CSG) led by HMS Prince of Wales (R09) supported by Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon (D35), a frigate, a nuclear attack submarine and a logistics support vessel.
The Prince of Wales CSG, as part of Operation Firecrest, will operate as part of NATO’s Standing Naval Maritime Group 1, which is being led in 2026 by the Royal Navy. It also includes ships from the United States, Canada and Northern European members of the Joint Expeditionary Force. Standing Naval Maritime Group 1 is in turn commanded by NATO’s Joint Force Command in Norfolk, Virginia, which will be exercising NATO’s new plans for defending the High North and Greenland under the NATO Artic Sentry plan.
The Prince of Wales CSG will also visit the Eastern Seaboard of the United States for port visits and to exercise with US F-35 aircraft. The Royal Navy may also during this period seek to take forward plans to operationalize autonomous air-to-air refueling tanker drones.
The clear intent of the plans announced by the UK Prime Minister is to demonstrate the NATO alliance’s commitment to defending the High North and Greenland as a joint enterprise.
None of the various announcements made about the deployment of the Prince of Wales CSG has given an indication of when it would commence. HMS Prince of Wales is still in a recovery and repair period after an extended deployment to the Asia-Pacific theater last year. But she is still alongside in Portsmouth rather than at the shipyard in Rosyth, to which she would normally be sent if any major problems needed to be rectified. Therefore a likely timetable for this year’s Operation Firecrest deployment is likely to be mid-summer. By this time her sister ship HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) will have completed her deep maintenance period in Rosyth and should be ready once again for operational deployment, should sufficient UK F-35B aircraft be available.
Built to live for centuries, Greenland sharks are charting uncertain waters
Greenland sharks can live for hundreds of years, drifting through some of the coldest and darkest waters on Earth. Once dismissed as slow, clumsy and nearly blind, these deep-sea giants are now giving up new secrets – at a time when climate change and commercial fishing are encroaching further on their world.
Issued on: 14/02/2026 - RFI
Greenland sharks can live for more than 400 years, making them the longest-living vertebrates on Earth.
Some of the Greenland sharks swimming today were alive during the French Revolution, and a few may even date back to the time of Shakespeare. Yet despite their age, scientists still know remarkably little about them. Where they reproduce, for example, remains a mystery. So does their number, and how their populations are changing.
For decades, these sharks were believed to be almost blind. Their eyes, often cloudy and covered in parasites, helped reinforce that view. Along with their slow movements and life far below the surface, this fed the idea of a sluggish scavenger drifting through the darkness.
That assumption has now been turned on its head. In research published in January, scientists examining Greenland sharks estimated to be 100 to 134 years old discovered that their eyes showed no signs of the damage normally associated with ageing.
“Usually tissue just kind of degrades over time. But we found evidence that there is a functional visual system in the Greenland shark, and it seems to be really well adapted for life in dim light,” Lily Fogg, a marine biologist at the University of Basel, who led the research, told RFI.
“With ageing, the DNA in the cell usually starts to break. So we did a test and we couldn't find any evidence for it. This suggests there's no ongoing cell death in the eye, which is quite incredible for an animal that's over a century old.”
Hidden lives
Despite their name, Greenland sharks are not geographically confined to Greenland. They roam both the Arctic and Atlantic oceans in waters that remain near freezing. Their presence has been observed from the surface down to depths of more than 2 kilometres.
Fully grown, the sharks can reach up to 7 metres in length and weigh more than a tonne. Much of what scientists know comes from animals caught accidentally in fishing gear.
Studying them under controlled scientific conditions, however, is challenging. Their habitat is remote, research expeditions are expensive and handling animals of such size is a daunting task in itself.
However, the research on their eyes offers a clue as to why these animals remain so mysterious: a visual system that works for more than a century doesn’t evolve quickly, and neither does anything else about them. Greenland sharks are fine-tuned for stability.
The cost of longevity
Greenland sharks grow extremely slowly, and scientists believe their gestation period may last between eight and 18 years, although firm data is lacking. The last pregnant Greenland shark documented was caught back in 1950, and more than 70 years later scientists have yet to discover where they breed.
They do know, however, that they produce very few offspring.
"They live a very, very long life. But this life is also linked to a very, very late sexual maturity – about the age of 150 years," explained Alessandro Cellerino, an evolutionary biologist at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy.
He's part of the team that sequenced the Greenland shark's genome in an effort to better understand how an animal can live for centuries.
While living for so long may sound like an advantage, it also comes with risks.
Cellerino says the sharks likely inhabit the entire bottom of the ocean, an icy abyss where temperatures remain more or less constant – meaning they could simply retreat to deeper waters as surface conditions change.
"It is very difficult for us to foresee what the effect of climate change could be on this specific species," he told RFI. "Unless their reproduction grounds are in regions that are getting warmer, which we don't know."
Their slow biology also means the species may take generations to recover from population losses. A shark caught before it reaches maturity never reproduces. Even small losses can echo for generations.
A fast-changing world
When an animal's environment shifts in the space of decades, that kind of biology can become a weakness – and the pressure on Greenland sharks is growing.
As Arctic sea ice contracts, previously inaccessible waters are opening to commercial fishing, exposing the sharks to greater bycatch risk. Around 3,500 are caught each year in nets set to catch cod and halibut.
Scientists do not know how many survive after being released.
"For any species, the rapid human-caused changes to the planet are going to present nearly unprecedented challenges," Catherine Macdonald, a marine ecologist at the University of Miami, told RFI.
"But for Greenland sharks that have such long generation times, those challenges are going to be even greater because the timescales on which evolutionary processes can act are so much longer."
Even low levels of mortality can have serious effects on a population that replaces itself so slowly. "It takes so long for adults to mature that the loss of reproductive adults is going to be really harmful," Macdonald said. In 2020, the Greenland shark was listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
Scientists encounter Greenland sharks in Arctic waters partly because shrinking sea ice changes where both animals and researchers can operate.
With researchers studying the places that are easiest to access rather than those where animals may actually spend most of their lives, Macdonald compares deep-sea research to “looking for lost keys under a street lamp, because it's light there”.
‘A very great loss’: Greenland sled dog champion fears for his culture as ice melts
Copyright AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
By Emma Burrows, Evgeniy Maloletka and Kwiyeon Ha with AP
Published on
Sled dog champion Jørgen Kristensen, 62, says it’s the first time he can remember when there has been no snow in January.
Growing up in a village in northern Greenland, Jørgen Kristensen’s closest friends were his stepfather’s sled dogs. Most of his classmates were dark-haired Inuit; he was different. When he was bullied at school for his fair hair – an inheritance from the mainland Danish father he never knew – the dogs came to him.
He first went out to fish on the ice with them alone when he was nine years old. They nurtured the beginning of a life-long love affair and Kristensen’s career as a five-time Greenlandic dog sled champion.
“I was just a small child. But many years later, I started thinking about why I love dogs so much,” says Kristensen, 62.
The dogs were a great support. They lifted me up when I was sad.
Jørgen Kristensen
Greenlandic dog sled champion
“The dogs were a great support,” he says. “They lifted me up when I was sad.”
For more than a thousand years, dogs have pulled sleds across the Arctic for Inuit seal hunters and fishermen. But this winter, in the town of Ilulissat, around 300km north of the Arctic Circle, that’s not possible.
Instead of gliding over snow and ice, Kristensen’s sled bounces over earth and rock. Gesturing to the hills, he says it’s the first time he can remember when there has been no snow – or ice in the bay – in January.
Rising temperatures in Greenland contribute to global sea level rise
The rising temperatures in Ilulissat are causing the permafrost to melt, buildings to sink and pipes to crack but they also have consequences that ripple across the rest of the world.
The nearby Sermeq Kujalleq glacier is one of the fastest-moving and most active on the planet, sending more icebergs into the sea than any other glacier outside Antarctica, according to the United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO.
As the climate has warmed, the glacier has retreated and carved off chunks of ice faster than ever before – significantly contributing to sea levels that are rising from Europe to the Pacific Islands, according to NASA.
The melting ice could reveal untapped deposits of critical minerals. Many Greenlanders believe that’s why US President Donald Trump turned their island into a geopolitical hotspot with his demands to own it and previous suggestions that the US could take it by force.
Greenlandic sled dogs stand in Ilulissat, Greenland, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
'We have large parts of our culture that we’re losing'
In the 1980s, winter temperatures in Ilulissat regularly hovered around -25 Celsius in winter, Kristensen says.
But nowadays, he says, there are many days when the temperature is above freezing – sometimes it can be as warm as 10 Celsius.
Kristensen says he now has to collect snow for the dogs to drink during a journey because there isn’t any along the route.
Although Greenlanders have always adapted – and could make dog sleds with wheels in future – the loss of the ice is affecting them deeply, says Kristensen, who now runs his own company showing tourists his Arctic homeland.
“If we lose the dog sledding, we have large parts of our culture that we’re losing. That scares me,” he says, pressing his lips together and becoming tearful.
A sled dog stands as the northern lights shine over Ilulissat, Greenland, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
The sea ice is disappearing
In winter, hunters should be able to take their dogs far out on the sea ice, Kristensen says. The ice sheets act like “big bridges”, connecting Greenlanders to hunting grounds but also to other Inuit communities across the Arctic in Canada, the United States and Russia.
“When the sea ice used to come, we felt completely open along the entire coast and we could decide where to go,” Kristensen says.
This January, there was no ice at all.
Driving a dog sled on ice is like being “completely without boundaries – like on the world’s longest and widest highway,” he says. Not having that is “a very great loss”.
Several years ago, Greenland’s government had to provide financial support to many families in the far north of the island after the sea ice did not freeze hard enough for hunting, says Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents Inuit people from across Arctic nations.
The warming weather also makes life more dangerous for fishermen who have swapped their dog sleds for boats, because there is more rain instead of snow, says Morgan Angaju Josefsen Røjkjær, Kristensen’s business partner.
When snow falls and is compressed, air is trapped between the flakes, giving the ice its brilliant white colour. But when rain freezes, the ice that forms contains little air and looks more like glass.
A fisherman can see the white ice and try to avoid it, but the ice formed from rain takes on the colour of the sea – and that’s dangerous because “it can sink you or throw you off your boat,” says Røjkjær.
Climate change, Olsvig says, “is affecting us deeply”, and is amplified in the Arctic, which is “warming three to four times faster than the global average”.
Jørgen Kristensen rides with his sled dogs in Ilulissat, Greenland, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
The glaciers are melting
Over the course of his lifetime, the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier has retreated by about 40 kilometres says Karl Sandgreen, 46, the head of Ilulissat’s Icefjord Center which is dedicated to documenting the glacier and its icebergs.
Looking out of the window at hills which would normally be covered with snow, Sandgreen describes mountain rock revealed by melting ice and a previously ice-covered valley inside the fjord where “there’s nothing now”.
Pollution is also speeding up the ice melt, Sandgreen says, describing how Sermeq Kujalleq is melting from the top down, unlike glaciers in Antarctica which largely melt from the bottom up as sea temperatures rise.
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This is exacerbated by two things: black carbon, or soot spewed from ship engines, and debris from volcanic eruptions. They blanket the snow and ice with dark material and reduce reflection of sunlight, instead absorbing more heat and speeding up melting. Black carbon has increased in recent decades with more ship traffic in the Arctic, and nearby Iceland has periodic volcanic eruptions.
Many Greenlanders told news agency AP they believe the melting ice is the reason Trump – a leader who has called climate change “the greatest con job ever” – wants to own the island.
“His agenda is to get the minerals, ” Sandgreen says.
Since Trump returned to office, fewer climate scientists from the US have visited Ilulissat, Sandgreen says. The US president needs to “listen to the scientists”, who are documenting the impact of global warming, he says.
Jørgen Kristensen gets on a boat by an iceberg at Disko Bay near Ilulissat, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
Teaching children about climate change
Kristensen says he tries to explain the consequences of global warming to the tourists who he takes out on dog sled rides or on visits to the icebergs. He says he tells them how Greenland’s glaciers are as important as the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
International summits, such as the United Nations climate talks in November in the Amazon gateway city of Belem, play a role, but it’s just as important to “teach children all over the world” about the importance of ice and oceans, alongside subjects like maths, Kristensen says.
“If we don’t start with the children, we can’t really do anything to help nature. We can only destroy it,” Kristensen says.
ByteDance says it will add safeguards to AI video tool Seedance 2.0 following Hollywood backlash
Copyright AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
By Mohammad Shayan Ahmad with AP
Published on
After facing mounting pressure from Hollywood alongside legal threats from Disney, ByteDance moves to tighten safeguards on its AI video app, Seedance 2.0.
Chinese tech firm ByteDance has said it will place restrictions on a controversial AI (artificial intelligence) powered video creation tool, following copyright complaints from major media companies.
Seedance 2.0, the latest model of the AI video generator released on February 12, which is only available in China, went viral and allows users to create realistic images and videos of famous actors and cartoon characters in short text prompts.
One of these images showed Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in a fight. The AI has been praised by many online for its highly realistic output, compared to already existing models like DeepSeek.
But several Hollywood companies have threatened to take legal action against ByteDance.
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OnFebruary 13, Disney sent a cease and desist letter to the company accusing them of training Seedance with a “pirated library” that included famous Disney characters from Star Wars, Marvel and more, according to media reports.
A source told Reuters that the letter claimed Seedance was using and distributing creative works as “public-domain clip art,” violating the copyright and intellectual property of Disney.
Paramount Skydance also sent a cease and desist letter to ByteDance, blaming them for copyright infringement, Variety reported.
“We have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0,” ByteDance said in a statement on Sunday.
“We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property and likeness by users,” it added.
The company did not clarify what measures were being taken.
The BBC reported that ByteDance had previously stated that it had “paused the ability for users to upload images of real people.”
SAG-AFTRA, a US labour union that protects the rights of on-screen actors and artists, voiced its concerns about the “unauthorised use of its members’ voice and likeness.” In a statement, they demanded"responsible AI development” that ceases to exist in the case of ByteDance.
In 2025, Disney also sent a cease and desist letter to Character.ai, which was accused of using their characters without permission. The chatbot service removed all characters that infringed on Disney’s intellectual property following the letter.
Disney and NBC Universal also sued online image generator Midourney in 2025, for the same reason of copyright infringement. Although the case is still ongoing, it shows the strides Disney and other creative companies are willing to take to protect their intellectual property.
However, these companies are also making deals with AI businesses. Disney struck a $1 Billion deal with OpenAI to allow its video generator, Sora AI, to creatively use the likeness of characters such as Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, and Luke Skywalker in a three-year licensing agreement.
Analysis: Will Big Tech's colossal AI spending crush Europe's data sovereignty?
Big Tech companies are going all in on AI development, raising their projected capital expenditure to over $700bn (€590bn) this year, an increase of roughly 75% compared to 2025.
Several Big Tech companies have reported earnings in recent weeks and provided estimates for their spending in 2026, along with leading analysts' projections
The data point that seems to have caught Wall Street’s attention the most is the estimated capital expenditure (CapEx) for this year, which collectively represents an investment of over $700bn (€590bn) in AI infrastructure.
That is more than the entire nominal GDP of Sweden for 2025, one of Europe's largest economies, as per IMF estimates.
Global chip sales are also projected to reach $1tn (€842bn) for the first time this year, according to the US Semiconuctor Industry Association.
In addition, major banks and consulting firms, such as JPMorgan Chase and McKinsey, project that total AI CapEx will surpass $5tn (€4.2tn) by 2030, driven by "astronomical demand" for compute.
CapEx refers to funds a company spends to build, improve or maintain long-term assets like property, equipment and technology. These investments are meant to boost the firm's capacity and efficiency over several years.
The expenditure is also not fully deducted in the same year. CapEx costs are capitalised on the balance sheet and gradually expensed through depreciation, representing a key indicator of how a company is investing in its future growth and operational strength.
The leap this year confirms a definitive pivot that began in 2025, when Big Tech is estimated to have spent around $400bn (€337bn) on AI CapEx.
As Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly stated, including at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, we are witnessing "the largest infrastructure build-out in human history".
Nvidia CEO speaking about the NVIDIA Rubin AI super computing platform at a news conference, Las Vegas, Jan. 2026 AP Photo/John Locher
Hyperscalers bet the house
At the top of the spending hierarchy for 2026 sits Amazon, which alone is guiding to invest a mammoth $200bn (€170bn).
To put the number into perspective, the company’s individual AI CapEx guidance for this year surpasses the combined nominal GDP of the three Baltic countries in 2025, according to IMF projections.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, follows with $185bn (€155bn), while Microsoft and Meta are set to deploy $145bn (€122bn) and $135bn (€113bn) respectively.
Oracle also raised its 2026 CapEx to $50bn (€42.1bn), nearly $15bn (€12.6bn) above earlier estimates.
Additionally, Tesla projects double the spending with almost $20bn (€16.8bn), primarily to scale its robotaxi fleet and advance the development of the Optimus humanoid robot.
Another of Elon Musk's companies, xAI, will also spend at least $30bn (€25.2bn) in 2026.
A new $20bn (€16.8bn) data centre named MACROHARDRR will be built in Mississippi, which Governor Tate Reeves stated is "the largest private sector investment in the state's history".
xAI will also expand the so-called Colossus, a cluster of data centres in Tennessee that has been described by Musk as the world's largest AI supercomputer.
Furthermore, the company was acquired by SpaceX in an all-stock transaction at the start of this month.
The merger valued SpaceX at $1tn (€842bn) and xAI at $250bn (€210bn), creating an entity worth $1.25tn (€1.05tn), reputedly the largest private company by valuation in history.
There are also reports that SpaceX intends to IPO sometime this year, with Morgan Stanley allegedly in talks to manage the offering that now includes exposure to xAI.
Elon Musk stated that the goal is to build an "integrated innovation engine" combining AI, rockets and satellite internet, with long-term plans that include space-based data centres powered by solar energy.
President Trump smiles as Elon Musk speaks in the Oval Office, Feb. 2025 AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Conversely, Apple continues to lag in spending with "only" a projected $13bn (€10.9bn).
However, the company announced a multi-year partnership with Google last month to integrate Gemini AI models into the next generation of Apple Intelligence.
Specifically, the collaboration will focus on overhauling Siri and enhancing on-device AI features. Therefore, one could say that Apple is outsourcing a lot of the investment it needs to be competitive on AI development.
As for Nvidia, it will report earnings and release projections on 25 February.
The company is primarily in the business of selling AI chips, and is expected to get the lion's share of the Big Tech's spending. Particularly, for the build-out of data centres.
In last August's earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang estimated a cost per gigawatt of data centre capacity between $50bn (€42.1bn) and $60bn (€50.5bn), with about $35bn (€29.5bn) of each investment going towards Nvidia hardware.
Wall Street has had mixed feelings about the enormous spending Big Tech companies have planned for 2026.
On the one hand, investors understand the necessity and urgency of developing a competitive edge in the artificial intelligence age.
On the other, the sheer scale of the spending has also spooked some shareholders. The market’s tolerance hinges on demonstrable ROI from this year onwards, as the investments are also increasingly financed with massive debt raises.
Morgan Stanley estimates that hyperscalers will borrow around $400bn (€337bn) in 2026, more than double the $165bn (€139bn) that was loaned out in 2025.
This surge could push the total issuance of high-grade US corporate bonds to a record $2.25tn (€1.9tn) this year.
Currently, projected AI revenue for 2026 is nowhere near matching the spending, and there are valid concerns. For instance, the possibility of hardware rapidly depreciating due to innovation, and other high operational costs such as energy usage.
It can be confidently stated that the numbers have a heavy reliance on future success.
As Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged this month, there are “elements of irrationality in the current spending pace".
An American flag is displayed over an entrance to the NYSE, New York, Feb 2026 AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Back in November, Alex Haissl, an analyst at Rothschild & Co, became a dissenting voice as he downgraded ratings for Amazon and Microsoft.
In a note to clients, the analyst wrote “investors are valuing Amazon and Microsoft's CapEx plans as if cloud-1.0 economics still applied”, referring to the low-cost structure of cloud-based services that allowed Big Tech firms to scale in the last two decades.
However, the analyst added “there are a few problems that suggest the AI boom likely won't play out in the same way, and it is probably far more costly than investors realise".
This view is also shared by Michael Burry, who is best known for being among the first investors to predict and profit from the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. Burry has argued that the current AI boom is a potential bubble pointing to unsustainable CapEx.
Big Tech’s AI race is funded by a tremendous amount of leverage. Whether this strategy will pay off, and which companies will be the winners and the losers, only time will tell.
At the moment, Nvidia certainly seems to be a great beneficiary. Moreover, Apple has a distinct approach by increasing third party reliance, through a partnership with Google, instead of massively scaling their spending. It is a different trade-off.
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Europe’s industrial deficit
Amid all this spending, urgent questions have also been raised about Europe’s ability to compete in a race that has become a battle of balance sheets.
For the European Union, the transatlantic contrast is sobering. While American firms are mobilising nearly €600bn in a single year, the EU’s coordinated efforts do not even match the financial firepower of the lowest spender among the US tech titans.
Brussels has attempted to rally with the AI Factories initiative, and the AI Continent Action Plan launched last April, which aim to mobilise public-private investments.
However, the numbers tell a stark story. Total European spending on sovereign cloud data infrastructure is forecast to reach just €10.6bn in 2026.
While this is a respectable 83% increase year-on-year, it remains a rounding error compared to the US AI build-out.
Last year, at the time when the initiatives mentioned were being discussed, the CEO of the French unicorn Mistral AI, Arthur Mensch, stated that “US companies are building the equivalent of a new Apollo program every year”.
Mensch also added that “Europe is building excellent regulation with the AI Act, but you cannot regulate your way to computing supremacy”.
Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, during an event on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, February 2025 AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard
Mistral represents one of the only flickers of European resistance in the AI race. The French company is employing the same strategy as most of Big Tech and aggressively expanding its physical footprint.
In September 2025, Mistral AI raised a €1.7bn Series C at a valuation of almost €12bn, with the Dutch semiconductor giant ASML leading the round by singly investing €1.3bn.
During the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Mistral's CEO confirmed a €1bn CapEx plan for 2026.
Just last week, the company also announced a major €1.2bn investment to build a data centre in Borlänge, Sweden.
In a partnership with the Swedish operator, EcoDataCenter, the facility will be designed to offer "sovereign compute" compliant with the EU’s strict data standards, and leveraging Sweden’s abundant green energy.
Set to open in 2027, this data centre will provide the high-performance computing required to train and deploy Mistral’s next-generation AI models.
This is an important move for the company, as it is the first infrastructure project outside France, and it is also a core venture for European data sovereignty.
Meanwhile, US tech titans are attempting to placate European regulators by offering "sovereign-light" solutions. Several Big Tech projects have been rolled out for "localised cloud zones", for example in Germany and Portugal, promising data residency.
However, critics argue these remain technically dependent on US parent companies, leaving the European industry vulnerable to the whims of the American economy and foreign policy.
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As 2026 unfolds, the stakes are clear. The US is betting the house, and its credit rating, on AI dominance.
Europe, cautious and capital-constrained, is hoping that targeted investments and regulation will be enough to carve out a sovereign niche in a world increasingly run on American technology.
