Europe's AI advantage at risk without secure and private infrastructure (www.techradar.com)

Europe’s push to implement the AI Act and boost cloud and AI deployment is colliding with a hard reality: without secure, scalable and sovereign infrastructure, AI initiatives risk stalling. Industry voices warn that harmonized regulation (AI Act, DORA, NIS2) plus geopolitical pressures mean infrastructure is now the decisive factor for whether Europe can translate AI investment into production value. Poorly designed stacks create performance bottlenecks, spiraling costs and compliance gaps that threaten operational continuity, reputations and legal exposure — and could blunt Europe’s competitive edge in AI. Technically, the priorities are clear: adequate compute capacity, fast and unified data access, audit-ready pipelines, and governance across hybrid/private clouds to meet sovereignty and sectoral rules. Metrics cited by enterprises — nearly half waste a quarter of cloud spend, 90% seek cost predictability, and a majority favor private cloud — underscore the shift from hyperscalers to hybrid/private models for critical workloads. Practical steps include infrastructure gap assessments, tight data integration and compliance-by-design, and continuous tuning for resilience and scalability. Done right, infrastructure becomes a competitive advantage; done wrong, it turns high-profile AI projects into costly, noncompliant experiments.