The European Parliament formally blocked a suite of new AI features on some of its lawmakers’ and their teams’ devices, over cybersecurity and privacy concerns, as the European Union (EU) welcomes an upcoming AI crush as Big Tech AI data center spending and capital expenditure (CapEx) threaten its sovereignty, according to POLITICO.
Disregarding – yet taking US threats with face value – the mounting tension and Washington’s explicit threats of retaliation over the EU’s regulatory scrutiny of Silicon Valley’s Big Tech AI data center spending and privacy misconduct, the EU’s top enforcers are demanding civil society and officials to remain unfazed by any empty threats.
“Don’t let yourself be scared,” said one of the EU’s top tech enforcers.
Washington is saying Europe’s AI safety rules are hindering innovation, creating limitations.
Even as US Big Tech AI data center spending pours hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, there’s a transatlantic tension between the EU’s cautious regulation and the US’ enforced race to dominate next AI generation.
Big Tech AI investments are going all in on AI development, pushing their projected capital expenditure to over $700 billion (€590 billion) this year, a roughly 75% jump compared to 2025, according to Euronews.
No matter the level of pressure imposed by Washington, Brussels is refusing to the budge, or retreat, from its insignia AI Act, no matter the level of geopolitical intimidation forced by the Trump administration.
Safety and growth should not be treated as opposing forces, as Europe’s current path clearly exposes that an excessive focus on precaution risks, while does slow innovation, but when scale, speed and capital are at a time defining the Big Tech AI spending race, there needs to be an oversight of Big Tech dominance.
The scale of Big Tech AI investments has stunned Wall Street, with a collective estimate CapEx for 2026 represents more than the entire nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Sweden for 2025. Global chip sales are projected to reach $1trillion (€842 billion) for the first time, according to the US Semiconductor Industry Association.
JPMorgan Chase and McKinsey expect total Big Tech AI data center spending CapEx to surpass $5trillion (€4.2trillion) by 2030, driven by “astronomical demand” for compute.
At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, called it “the largest infrastructure build-out in human history.”
AI Spending by Big Tech Companies Is Causing Bubble Concerns
At the top of the 2026 spending hierarchy sits Amazon, guiding to invest a mammoth $200bn (€170bn). Alphabet follows with $185bn (€155bn), while Microsoft and Meta are set to deploy $145bn (€122bn) and $135bn (€113bn) respectively.
Oracle raised its CapEx to $50bn (€42.1bn), Tesla projects Big Tech AI spending of $20bn (€16.8bn), and Elon Musk’s xAI will spend at least $30bn (€25.2bn), alongside a new $20bn data centre in Mississippi described as “the largest private sector investment in the state’s history”.
Morgan Stanley estimates hyperscale’s will have Big Tech companies investing in AI borrow around $400bn (€337bn) in 2026, more than double 2025 levels, potentially pushing total issuance of high-grade US corporate bonds to a record $2.25trillion (€1.9trillion). Yet projected AI revenue for 2026 is nowhere near matching the spending.
As Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged, there are “elements of irrationality in the current spending pace.”
Alex Haissl of Rothschild & Co warned that “investors are valuing Amazon and Microsoft’s CapEx plans as if cloud-1.0 economics still applied,” adding that “there are a few problems that suggest the AI boom likely won’t play out in the same way, and it is probably far more costly than investors realise.”
Michael Burry has also pointed out unsustainable Big Tech AI data center spending, CapEx, arguing the AI boom is a potential bubble.
The Big Tech AI shift in spending numbers, for now, has a heavy reliance on future success.
Europe Tightens Rules as US Ramps Up Infrastructure
While American Big Tech companies investing in AI nearly spend $660bn (€600bn) in a single year, Europe’s coordinated efforts remain modest. Total European spending on sovereign cloud data infrastructure is forecast to reach just €10.6bn in 2026, an 83% increase year-on-year (YoY), but still a rounding error compared to the US build-out.
Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral AI, has warned that “US companies are building the equivalent of a new Apollo program every year” and that “Europe is building excellent regulations with the AI Act, but you cannot regulate your way to computing supremacy.”
Big Tech spending on AI regulatory focus is becoming more visible. The European Parliament has disabled “built-in artificial intelligence features” on lawmakers’ work devices after its IT department said it could not guarantee data security.
“Some of these features use cloud services to carry out tasks that could be handled locally, sending data off the device,” the Parliament’s tech support desk said, adding that “the full extent of data shared with service providers is still being assessed” and that “it is considered safer to keep such features disabled.”
At the same time, Brussels is facing political pressure, when it comes to Big Tech AI data center spending. Prabhat Agarwal, who heads administration of the Digital Services Act, urged officials and civil society groups by stating that, “Don’t let yourself be scared.”
He admitted that “our work” is “more difficult, more adversarial” than anticipated, arguing that Europe must “defend a space in which we can actually debate things that are important for our society.”
In the US, energy consumption of generative AI is being financed by massive debt and framed as a race of balance sheets. In Europe, lawmakers are switching off AI assistants and doubling down on safety and digital sovereignty.
The question now is whether Europe’s model of strict oversight can coexist with the scale of Big Tech AI data center spending and speed required in what Huang calls the largest infrastructure build out in human history or whether, in the Big Tech companies investing in AI era, capital and compute will ultimately decide the winners.
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