- Trillion-dollar valuations: the AI scale gap with the US widens
The US AI giants are reaching a new financial scale. Anthropic filed for a Nasdaq listing on 26 October, with reports pointing to a mid-November debut at a valuation of $1.5-2 trillion. OpenAI is raising up to $20 billion at a valuation of around $1.25 trillion, led by UAE investors and Coatue. Its annualised revenue is expected to reach at least $70 billion by the end of 2026 (Tech Funding News). For Europe, the numbers show how wide the gap in capital and computing power has become. That makes it more pressing to build sovereign alternatives and scale up European AI companies.
- EU and Canada form an “alliance for the future”, with AI at its core
At a summit in Montreal at the end of October, the EU and Canada launched a new alliance focused on “collective sovereignty and resilience in areas such as AI”. The two sides agreed to deepen cooperation on AI. Europe also opened its supercomputing infrastructure to Canadian researchers, companies and start-ups, and the two signed a digital trade deal (Tribune). The alliance is a direct response to US pressure on traditional partners. It also comes as Canada’s Cohere prepares to merge with Germany’s Aleph Alpha.
- AI Act: the next deadline is 2 December 2026
The AI Act was amended this summer by the Digital Omnibus, which entered into force on 27 July 2026. Two things change on 2 December 2026:
- A new ban on AI-generated non-consensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material takes effect.
- The grace period for machine-readable marking of AI-generated content ends for systems already on the market.
The main high-risk obligations have moved to December 2027, and to August 2028 for AI built into regulated products (AIacto). Companies have a little over a month left to get their AI content labelling in place.
