Europe’s AI wake-up call: cybersecurity threats, sovereignty fears, and a growing demand for ROI dominated VivaTech

Welcome to Eye on AI. Beatrice Nolan here. In today’s issue: All the news from Paris’ Viva Tech conference. The stream of researchers leaving Google Deep Mind continues. The defeat of New York Congressional candidate Alex Bores—and what it means. Open AI and Broadcom unveil new AI chip. I spent last week in Paris for Viva Tech, Europe’s largest startup and tech conference, which managed to draw 180,000 attendees, despite a record heatwave in France. Viva Tech’s biggest headliner, Jeff Bezos, was in techno-optimist mode, arguing that AI will create a labour shortage rather than mass redundancy. He paired that with his longer-term vision of moving heavy industry off Earth and building a permanent industrial presence on the Moon. Executive Chairman of AMI Labs and former head of Meta’s AI efforts, Yann LeCun, was happy to provide a counterpoint, taking the time to tell CNBC that the AI industry could be heading for a “big bubble explosion” if companies fail to bring costs down fast enough. The winner of the most memorable moment, however, goes to two humanoid robots. While attempting to perform a choreographed demo at a booth, the pair slowly drifted backward into a row of televisions and sent two of the screens crashing to the floor—a counter to some of the hype on display in the exhibition hall. The more grounded conversations elsewhere at the conference revolved around immediate realities: who controls AI, how to counter some of the current risks, and what Europe, still reeling from the shock of being cut off from Anthropic’s Mythos model, needs to do to control it’s access to AI. Mind the gap Perhaps unsurprisingly, the event was preoccupied by one of the more imminent risks posed by AI: cybersecurity. The debut of Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 Cyber has fueled anxiety among both business and government leaders due to their advanced hacking abilities. These models can now, at speed and scale, do what once required time and specialized h