Anthropic access halt puts Europe’s AI dependence under scrutiny
A U.S. order limiting foreign use of Anthropic’s top models has revived European concerns over digital sovereignty and business continuity.
By Daniel Okafor · Business Editor
3 min read
A U.S. government order requiring Anthropic to suspend foreign access to its two most advanced AI models has forced European executives to confront a practical risk: key AI tools can be cut off by another country. Fortune reported that the restriction applied to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 and arrived with little warning, leaving overseas customers exposed.
The dispute has drawn attention beyond Anthropic because many companies have already built U.S.-made AI systems into routine operations. Fortune reported that foreign customers, including many large European companies, were affected by the order.
Anthropic has described the directive as a misunderstanding tied to a narrow technical vulnerability, according to Fortune. President Donald Trump has previously called the company an “out-of-control Radical Left AI company,” Fortune reported, raising questions among customers about whether the action reflected politics, security concerns or both.
Dependence on foreign technology
European concerns are sharpened by the region’s reliance on imported digital infrastructure. The European Commission and European Parliament have said the EU depends on foreign countries for more than 80% of its digital products and infrastructure.
Anthropic’s customer base also shows the scale of potential disruption. Reuters has reported that the company has more than 300,000 business customers, while Anthropic says its revenue in Europe, the Middle East and Africa has increased more than ninefold over the past year, according to Fortune.
Marc Warner, chief executive of U.K. AI company Faculty and chief technology officer of Accenture, told Fortune that executives had been slow to take seriously the possibility that the U.S. could cut access to major AI systems. He said technology markets often concentrate power among a few dominant providers, leaving Europe with limited fallback options.
Digital sovereignty debate returns
The episode has revived Europe’s debate over digital sovereignty, or how much control the region should have over the technology that supports its economy. Arno Schäfer, chief executive of Helsinki-based cloud infrastructure provider UpCloud, told Fortune that business leaders increasingly view sovereignty as a matter of continuity and strategic risk, not just policy.
Customer behavior still points to a mixed picture. Research from cloud platform CUDO Compute found that 46% of U.K. organizations said geopolitical instability was pushing them to keep AI workloads in domestic markets, compared with 36% overall. The same research found that 43% still put cost and performance ahead of sovereignty when choosing where to deploy systems.
Europe also has few companies able to match the leading U.S. AI labs. Fortune reported that France’s Mistral, often described as a leading European AI company, remains behind top American rivals on frontier models.
Other European efforts have struggled to settle the issue. Gaia-X, an open data project backed by companies including Airbus, was created to keep European data governed under EU rules, according to Fortune. The project has faced criticism over slow progress and concerns that U.S. technology company involvement weakened its original purpose.
What companies can do now
Warner told Fortune that most businesses do not need to abandon U.S. technology at once. He said the more urgent task is to identify the most critical dependencies and reduce them while alternatives develop.
He argued that companies should decide where proprietary AI systems are needed to protect intellectual property and where standard tools are enough. Warner also warned executives to plan as if AI progress continues at its current pace, citing possible economic disruption, job displacement and AI-enabled biological risks as future concerns.
The Anthropic case leaves European companies with a sharper question about trade-offs. Access to the strongest AI systems may bring short-term advantages, but Fortune’s reporting shows that reliance on foreign-controlled platforms can become a business risk when governments intervene.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.