A diagnosis has emerged that Europe faces the risk of long-term technological dependence as it relies excessively on the United States and Asia for key artificial intelligence infrastructure.

On May 26 local time, blockchain media outlet Cryptopolitan reported that global insurance and financial services company Allianz warned in a new report that Europe could fall into a "dependency trap" in global AI trade.

The key point is that Europe is being pushed toward the consumer market rather than the production base of the AI economy. Allianz said technology industries such as cloud computing, semiconductors and data centres are becoming central to the reshaping of the global economy, but the United States and Asia hold dominance in these fields. If Europe continues to rely on external infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities, its economic sovereignty could weaken in the future.

Current figures also show this structure. U.S. companies control about 80 percent of Europe’s cloud computing market. U.S. firms also account for 60 percent of enterprise software revenue and about 40 percent of actual operating computing capacity. Nearly half of data-centre projects to be built in Europe are also controlled by U.S. Big Tech.

The investment pace gap is also widening. Since 2023, the United States has tripled import income linked to AI infrastructure investment, while Europe’s increase in AI-related imports has been limited to about 40 percent. Allianz said the gap shows the difference between the speed of U.S. infrastructure expansion and Europe’s pace of response.

In hardware and manufacturing, the tilt toward Asia is stronger. Asia accounts for about 65 percent of global AI-related exports, and 7 of the world’s top 10 AI exporting countries are in Asia. Europe’s vulnerability has increased as it relies heavily on Asian manufacturing and supply chains while its infrastructure expansion remains slow, the report said.

Allianz said Europe is in an unstable position as it becomes increasingly dependent on overseas cloud providers, chip manufacturing and computing power. It said Europe faces a high risk of becoming a consumer of AI technology rather than a "dominant producer" in an AI-led economy. It also said that as AI becomes a strategic asset for major countries, nations that secure underlying infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities will gain long-term economic leverage.

This structure goes beyond a market-share issue and extends to supply-chain and geopolitical issues. That is the background for concerns that Europe could be caught between U.S. dominance in infrastructure and Asia’s dominance in manufacturing. Allianz warned that reliance on overseas AI infrastructure and manufacturing could, over the long term, expose Europe to supply-chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions and external economic pressure.

As a result, the key point to watch is how quickly Europe can accelerate its own AI investment and expansion of its production base. Allianz stressed that Europe must sharply accelerate domestic AI investment to avoid long-term technological dependence. If Europe fails to secure competitiveness at home, the likelihood is increasing that it will become locked into a lagging position in the newly forming AI industrial order.