Taxes, Tariffs, & Trump: How a Shifting World Order Opens Doors for Europe's Moment

Why the Time to Build Global Tech Leaders at Home Is Now

For years, the United States has been the ultimate destination for ambitious tech founders worldwide. It was the market everyone wanted to be in: the land of deep capital pools, a source of well-developed and capable talent, confident investors, and a launch pad from which to scale globally. But that assumption is now up for debate. The political climate has changed fundamentally. Tariffs, taxes, and talent restrictions have introduced a new layer of unpredictability. And no matter what happens next, uncertainty makes people pause and question whether the US is still the best place to build a software company.

At the same time, we also have a powerful technological inflexion point, driven by AI, which is shifting the balance of opportunity.

The combination of geopolitical realignment, with it a growing preference for local sovereignty, new EU initiatives to help scale businesses across Europe, and an emerging new technology era driven by the rapid development of AI, has created something rare: a generational opportunity for Europe to lead on a level playing field.

Talent Is Coming Home

For decades, Europe has been a net exporter of its talent and brilliant minds to Silicon Valley and the US. While four of the top 10 Universities in the world for Computer Science are in Europe, many of the best international students opt to study in the US, where the prospects in the software and technology sector after graduation are often more favourable. What’s worse, we have often been unable to hang on to those who study here locally, in our excellent educational system. We have been a net exporter of talent.

The received wisdom being that there was a greater opportunity in the US than in Europe. That there is a deeper talent pool of like minded people, a culture of ambition, access to capital, and fewer barriers (cultural, linguistic and legislative) to scale across the US and globally.

But the environment for international students in the US has grown increasingly hostile in recent weeks. Student visas are being revoked for reasons as vague as political social media posts. Even institutions like Harvard are in open standoffs with the federal government over ideological interference and funding, with the Federal Government currently holding back its $2bn of annual funding to the institution.

US Federal Government is withholding $2bn of funding, in stand-off with Harvard University

The effect is chilling. If you’re a brilliant computer science student, or AI researcher from Madrid or Milan, do you still want to move to California to build your career?

Europe is a credible alternative. We have world-class educational establishments and an emergent AI sector that is flourishing, with the brilliant business leaders choosing to be based in Europe because of the AI skills & research capabilities that are as good as anywhere. DeepMind, arguably the global leader in AI, is a division of Google that remains proudly headquartered in the UK. Cohere, founded by Anglo-Canadian Aidan Gomez, who studied at Oxford and lives in the UK, does much of its research from London. Mistral, backed by some of the US & Europe’s most prominent investors, is attracting top-tier engineers from across the globe.

That shift opens the door to something more important: an ecosystem that can retain and reward its best people at home. So while Europe has historically been a net exporter of entrepreneurial talent, with the right support it could become a magnet.

AI Data Sovereignty - Levelling the Playing Field

Artificial intelligence is ushering in a profound shift in the dynamics of global tech. Unlike the last 30 years of the Internet-era, in which the US has dominated, AI presents a fresh battleground - one where Europe is no longer a laggard.

Today 60% of the value of global public equity markets are concentrated in the US, much of their success is down to the incredible growth of their cloud companies, with 25% of the value of the S&P 500 held in the top five tech stocks. Movement to the cloud has created massive economies of scale, by centralising the world’s data on infrastructure owned and run by a small number of “hyperscalers” like Microsoft, Google and Amazon. As they attempt to use their financial might and trillion dollar valuations to leverage their market position to dominate in the age of AI, there is an emerging contradictory theme that may limit their success.

A counter cyclical trend away from "Cloud to on-premise, & locally hosted infrastructure

With the astonishing potential and transformative effect of AI there is a growing recognition of the need for government institutions, public sector and private companies to own and control their own data, maintain sovereignty over models, and ensure deployment flexibility and security. Leading European AI companies like Aleph Alpha, Cohere and Mistral offer the ability to deploy their technology on a private cloud or on-premise, as they seek to attract customers from Public Sector, Defence, Financial Services, Pharmaceuticals, and other sectors with sensitive data. These companies may no longer be comfortable with data being stored and processed offshore in hyper-scaled environments. There is growing anxiety around what gets retained, who sees it, and where it ends up. So for many businesses the only acceptable answer is greater control.

What’s emerging is a kind of full-circle moment. For 25 years, businesses were encouraged to move everything into the cloud. Now, for mission-critical AI use cases, businesses are pulling things back. They want local control, internal deployment, and guarantees that their data won’t be commingled or exposed to third-party training models.

European AI firms are responding to this. They’re building powerful models, and they’re building trust. In doing so, they’re turning a technology shift into a strategic regional advantage.

Rethinking the US IPO Default

The assumption that the path to scale ends in a New York IPO may also be about to break down. For years, listing on the NASDAQ or NYSE was seen as the natural destination for successful European tech businesses. There was a greater concentration of capital, more knowledgeable analysts and investors leading to higher market valuation.

But the US is no longer the obvious choice. Regulatory volatility, tariff threats, and domestic political friction have added real risk to what was once considered a gold standard.

Companies like Zopa are reported to be actively reconsidering their plans to list in the US, citing concerns over unpredictability in the American market.

This presents a generational opportunity for Europe. If we can build a credible alternative - capital markets with enough depth, knowledge, and scale to support major listings - we can stop sending our best companies abroad. Ursula van de Lydon, recently re-elected as President of the EU, chose Capital Markets Union, as a core policy, to unlock Europe's potential and get investments flowing across the region.

A unified approach to investment and regulation could finally lay the groundwork for a European NASDAQ, one that keeps our winners closer to home, supports them at scale, and helps build lasting, European-owned tech giants.

Now is the time to act. If a handful of standout IPOs happen here (and go well) momentum will follow. Others will stay. The centre of gravity can shift.

Fragmented No More?

One of Europe’s perennial challenges is its fragmentation. Twenty-seven member states. Twenty-seven sets of rules, bureaucracy, legislation, and tax codes. Building a business in one country with some success, only to struggle later with sequential market entries in each subsequent country in Europe, can feel like starting all over again 27 times, with a lack of momentum. Scaling across borders has historically been slow, bureaucratic, and costly. It takes a good US tech company an average of 10 years to $100m revenue, a similar company would take 15 years in Europe. But the EU is beginning to take action.

One of the most promising initiatives is the proposed "28th Regime" - a fictional, harmonised member state under which businesses could operate with a single set of regulations, taxes, and compliance standards across the entire continent. For tech SMEs, this could be transformational: a way to trade and scale across Europe without having to navigate a patchwork of legal frameworks.

If implemented well, the 28th Regime could finally provide Europe with the kind of domestic market unity and opportunity that US founders take for granted. It would enable faster, more efficient growth and create a truly single market for European tech.

Combine this with AI tools that allow our software companies to make their products almost instantaneously available in any language, also making it far more efficient to build any additional country-specific capabilities that remain. 

Then you have a truly Pan-European opportunity that rivals the US single market.

A New Preference for European Tech

Europe’s buying habits are shifting. For decades, US tech dominated enterprise software procurement across the continent. But as the geopolitical landscape shifts and questions around data security intensify, European businesses are starting to prioritise local alternatives.

It’s not simply about regulation, it’s also about resilience. Buying European increasingly means shorter supply chains, stronger governance alignment, and a closer cultural fit. And in a world where confidence in global systems is wobbling, that matters.

We’re already seeing the start of a movement. Whether driven by cost, trust, or simply the desire to support homegrown innovation, more businesses are asking whether US dominance should continue to be the default.

Seizing the Moment

For too long, Europe has operated with a sense of modesty, while the US projected confidence. But that modesty no longer serves us. Talent is staying. Data is sovereign. Capital markets are evolving. The rules of the game are being rewritten.

We don’t need to copy Silicon Valley, we just need to give European tech the space, support, and scale to compete on its own terms.

At Boardwave, we’re proud to be playing a small but active role in this transformation, connecting the most ambitious software leaders across Europe and providing the networking platform, community and resources to help them scale from €10m to €100m and beyond.

Boardwave members, patrons & partners discussing the future of European tech

Europe has everything it needs to build world-beating software companies.

This is our moment. Let’s not waste it.