Europe’s AI Reality Check: Why Control Is the New Competitive Edge

Earlier this week, SUSE attended IDC’s European Enterprise Summit in London. It was a fantastic evening of ideas, insight and honest reflection on where Europe really stands with AI and digital sovereignty. The conversations were thought-provoking and grounded in reality. For all the excitement about AI, there was a clear message: ambition alone will not close the gap between expectation and what is truly possible today.

IDC’s latest research shows that many organisations are still struggling to turn AI pilots into measurable outcomes. After years of experimentation, the pressure is on to deliver meaningful results. That shift in focus is not a slowdown but a sign of maturity. Before AI can scale, it needs a solid foundation that allows it to move closer to the enterprise data where real business differentiation lives.

One particular comment by Jen Thomson stood out:

• “Sovereignty and infrastructure are not a side project. These are the control and cost levers to make AI safe, trusted and to scale economically. We’re seeing that the winners are not avoiding the constraints but are actually designing for them.”

Put it this way – if data is the currency of AI, sovereignty defines who controls the bank. Organisations that design for sovereignty from the start will move faster and with greater confidence than those forced to retrofit control later.

Another clear trend was the changing geography of AI. We are moving away from a world dominated by large frontier models towards a mixed model, where AI also runs closer to the enterprise. That could be in local data centres, at the edge and even on devices. This shift toward distributed intelligence reflects a growing need for sovereignty, control and performance that comes from proximity. The future of AI will be hybrid by design.

Rahiel Nasir captured the sentiment perfectly:

• “We need to stop talking about sovereignty as an abstract idea. A more practical way of looking at it is managing risk — understanding your organisation’s tolerance for risk and putting the right workloads in the right venue.” 

That perspective reframed AI and digital sovereignty not as a political talking point but as a design principle for resilient, future-ready infrastructure. Businesses no longer see sovereignty as isolation but as interdependence with autonomy. They want access to global innovation while retaining local control. They expect open ecosystems that let them choose how and where to build their AI capabilities.

That balance between openness and sovereignty sits at the heart of SUSE’s strategy. We believe true digital sovereignty is about the freedom to innovate, to choose and to scale responsibly. Through open source innovation, sovereign infrastructure and flexibility across cloud, data centre and edge, SUSE helps organisations build AI systems they can innovate with, control and trust.

The key takeaway from IDC’s Summit was clear. The winners in Europe’s AI race will not be the loudest voices chasing the hype. They will be the ones quietly fixing their foundations, designing for sovereignty and embedding control into every layer of their technology stack.