Mistral just closed Europe's largest ever tech funding round to build the compute layer this column keeps saying the continent talks about more than it builds, except one of its two lead investors isn't European. The same day, Google's EU search overhaul shows what it actually costs when Brussels' rules bite instead of just existing.
The EU's General Court told Opera that Microsoft Edge isn't a gatekeeper on the same day the Commission opened a licensing probe into Oracle's cloud business, a split verdict that says more about where Brussels sees real market power than any single ruling could. Meanwhile a German spacetech raise shows sovereign infrastructure money moving at last, not just sovereign-AI branding.
The European Commission has designated ChatGPT a Very Large Online Search Engine under the Digital Services Act, the first time an AI chatbot has been slotted into that legal box, alongside Reddit and Roblox as very large online platforms. All three now have a four-month window, running out around January 2027, to show they can contain systemic risk, the same day the Netherlands published exactly the kind of infrastructure alternative that rulebook was always meant to protect.