AI Race: Chip War Intensifies … - Le Monde

The latest analysis from Le Monde makes it clear that the battle for AI supremacy has shifted from software to the physical battlefield of advanced chips. Europe, once a passive observer, is now scrambling to secure its own semiconductor supply chains as the US and China tighten their grip on production.

DeepSeek’s recent breakthroughs in efficient model training prove that Chinese AI can compete without relying on the most cutting-edge Nvidia hardware. Meanwhile, Kimi and Qwen are pushing the boundaries of reasoning and multimodal capabilities, challenging Western giants like OpenAI and Google on their own turf.

The core of this war lies in the fabrication of high-bandwidth memory and advanced logic chips, where Taiwan and South Korea hold the keys. The US CHIPS Act and Europe’s own Chips Act are desperate attempts to reshore manufacturing, but they face years of construction and talent shortages.

China, however, is not standing still. It is aggressively investing in domestic chip fabs and exploring new architectures like photonic computing to leapfrog traditional silicon limitations.

For Europe, the real risk is becoming a dependent consumer of AI technology rather than a creator. Without sovereign chip capacity, the continent’s startups and industries will be at the mercy of foreign pricing and export controls.

The next twelve months will reveal whether Europe can turn its ambition into actual silicon. If not, the AI race will be decided by the two tech superpowers, leaving the old continent to watch from the sidelines.