That was the core debate as industry leaders took to the stage to discuss whether Europe can seize the AI moment, or risk becoming a perpetual technology taker.

Chairing the panel, Nicholas Collins, senior advisor at Eight Advisory, opened by gauging the room: is Europe ready for AI today? Only a small show of hands suggested a lack of confidence. The message was clear: the ambition exists, but the infrastructure is lagging.

Harro Beusker, CEO and co-founder of nLighten, stressed that European operators must be technically ready for rapidly escalating density requirements.

“AI workloads are not just more demanding, they’re evolving faster than anything we’ve built for before,” he said. His focus is on flexible design, facilities capable of supporting current and next-generation cooling and power demands, from 15kW racks today to far denser deployments tomorrow.

From the hyperscale perspective, Vladimir Prodanovic of Nvidia warned that Europe must rethink scale entirely. While gigawatt-level AI campuses are being deployed in the US and Middle East, Europe is still talking in megawatts.

“If the workload is a Ferrari, you need a racetrack, not a village road,” he remarked, calling for a reset in expectations and speed of execution.

That message was echoed by Jorge Alvarez, CEO of Retelit, who argued that Europe must invest not only in capacity, but in resilience and global connectivity. With power-constrained metros tightening, he predicts expansion into new regions, closer to end users and away from saturated hubs.

Mark Pestridge, EVP & GM at Telehouse Europe, highlighted power access as the critical bottleneck. “Renewable power is now more important than real estate,” he said, describing hybrid air-and-liquid-cool designs and retrofit programmes aimed at compressing time-to-market.

Finally, Lex Coors of Digital Realty and the EUDCA tackled AI sovereignty, urging Europe to protect sensitive data while still tapping into global innovation.

“The priority should be controlling private data, not reinventing the entire AI universe,” he said; a position that struck a pragmatic balance between sovereignty and competitiveness.

The conclusion: Europe can compete, but only if it builds boldly, collaborates deeply, and accelerates now. In the age of AI, hesitation will be far more expensive than action.

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