[tormeh]

It's a bit strange, but a huge handout from the EU/France and a huge AI lab investment round are different orders of magnitude. The necessary sums are just not politically possible. How do you sell spending the equivalent of ten USS Gerald Fords on a start-up? You don't.

[teiferer]

And a lot of the "funding" is through mutual deals with MSFT, Nvidia, etc. The Europeans have none of that and would need to pay in actual cash.