US cash, China’s patents, EU’s brakes: The race for controlling AI’s future is heading to a cliff

IN THE high-octane race for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy, the world’s three largest economic powers, the United States, China, and the European Union, find themselves inside a peculiar car that is hurtling towards an uncertain, maybe even perilous, future.

The US, a venture capitalist (VC) with a bottomless cash war chest, has got its foot firmly on the pedal, propelling the AI engine forward at breakneck speed. Last year, private investment in AI by US investors reached US$67 billion, based on estimates by Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report. This is six times more than the modest US$11 billion pumped in by their counterparts in the EU and United Kingdom combined, and a staggering nine times larger than China’s pithy US$7.7 billion. CB Insights’ State of AI Q1 2024 report also plainly reconfirmed that the top 10 investors in AI globally are all US-based.

This simply reiterates the fact that when US Big Tech goes shopping, the price or terrain seldom slows it down. In its relentless and signature pursuit of innovation and progress, US Big Tech has rapidly acquired stakes globally – from investing in Germany’s Aleph Alpha, France’s Mistral and UK’s Stability and Autogen to Japan’s Sakana, each a promising global-scale AI startup.