Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them) [LWN.net]

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 11, 2026 12:17 UTC (Wed) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813)
In reply to: Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them) by nim-nim
Parent article: FOSS in times of war, scarcity, and AI

> But do we need European companies to have a presence in other countries?

Yes. Otherwise other companies will fill that vacuum. Autarchy doesn't work. Companies need to grow.

Europe lost a sugar daddy (the US) and got a delayed adolescence as a result. Switching to another (China) is not the solution. Europe needs to grow up.

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Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 11, 2026 14:39 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

Growing up does not mean starting with a presence in other countries. It means forgetting about other country wishes for a time and concentrating on its own needs first to get working products and services out of the door.

Maintaining a presence for presence sake gave us spectacular turds like MicroNokia. Extrinsic is no substitute for intrinsic growth, you need a robust intrinsic backbone to survive extrinsic expansion.

Europe needs hyperscalers (lots of them)

Posted Feb 11, 2026 15:37 UTC (Wed) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link]

Europe wouldn't start from scratch.

And MicroNokia wasn't the end of the world. We can't predict these outcomes and we don't need to micromanage them either.