Building AI Together: A New Era of Sectoral Collaboration
Public-private collaboration emerged as the defining theme of last week’s AI Action Summit in Paris. As governments advance their AI ambitions—particularly in Sovereign AI—there is growing recognition that industry partnership is essential to driving innovation. This shift reflects a global trend, with regions like Singapore, the U.S., the UK, and now Europe developing collaborative models to accelerate AI adoption.
The EU’s InvestAI initiative includes €50 billion in fresh EU funding, supplementing €150 billion from private investors under the European AI Champions Initiative. There’s now an increased recognition between government and industry that a functional flywheel between technology, capital and policy is the key to unlocking AI potential.
From Safety to Action—A Shift in Priorities
These renewed commitments and investments align with a broader global shift toward action. It’s all in the name—the summit evolved from the “AI Safety Summit” to the “AI Summit,” and finally the “AI Action Summit,” reflecting the shift in focus from safety and ethical concerns to practical implementation.
Sovereign AI as a Strategic Imperative
Europe’s investment in Sovereign AI initiatives follows the recent development of notable projects like Stargate and reflects a broader strategic push by governments to build their own AI capabilities, in partnership with industry. With increasing global competition in AI, nations are prioritizing domestic innovation, funding AI research and fostering homegrown capabilities by tapping into their ecosystem of industry partners.
The Push for Sovereign AI Infrastructure
Emmanuel Macron’s plan to inject €109 billion into France’s AI ecosystem hinges on investment firms and companies across tech, industry and connectivity coming together to build the high-performance computing centers, data centers and cloud platforms needed to support large-scale AI development.
But investment in infrastructure alone is not enough. Acceleration of AI adoption requires balancing business-like needs with broader considerations such as public services and data security to drive AI innovation and accessibility. Key to this is investment in AI education and skilling, fostering an open model ecosystem to drive innovation and accessibility, and ensuring cultural representation in AI models by reflecting diverse languages and societal contexts.
Scaling AI Across Enterprises
As enterprise AI scales, there’s an urgent need to reinforce structured collaboration between policymakers and industry leaders to guide its deployment. Now would be an opportune moment to establish an Enterprise AI Advisory Ecosystem for Europe—a forum where key enterprise stakeholders of all sizes could directly inform policy and accelerate AI adoption—and ensure AI research and innovation translate into real-world outcomes. This is something we at Dell support in the U.S. also, as we sit at this critical juncture for AI adoption, globally. The AI Action Summit has laid the foundation for such ecosystems, but it’s vital this new momentum is used as a steppingstone to greater and deeper AI collaboration.
And while we talk about the importance of expanding the enterprise AI ecosystem, it isn’t solely large enterprises that we should be focused on. Small and medium businesses are major drivers of growth in most countries, generating critical contributions to GDP and employment. This alone is a key reason to put Sovereign AI infrastructure in place and ensure businesses of all sizes have access to that infrastructure.
Delivering on AI’s Real-World Potential
The collaborative shift from ambition to action underscores the need for scalable, enterprise-ready AI solutions that can bridge the gap between policy commitments and real-world impact. With the Dell AI Factory, which is designed to simplify the deployment of real-world AI applications, while enabling faster and more repeatable AI outcomes, Dell is playing a vital role in developing this global ecosystem and helping nations to achieve their Sovereign AI objectives.
We welcome the renewed focus on public-private partnership, which can positively define the AI era, and look forward to playing our part to help governments in Europe and around the world make tech-driven commitments a reality.
