European

The European Union presents its digital sovereignty plan to compete with the US technologically. It’s a wonderful utopia

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The European commission just announced the European Technological Sovereignty Package. The objective is to reduce European dependence on foreign suppliers of both hardware and software solutions, and to achieve this the plan is simple: ensure that European companies can compete with North American companies. And precisely there lies the problem. For a European cloud. The entire focus of this initiative is on drastically reducing the exposure of the Old Continent to cloud services controlled by American companies. The concern generated by the CLOUD Act and the current geopolitical situation has caused the EU to try to migrate at least part of its critical services to local nodes so that this data always remain under European jurisdiction. The regulation trap. The great Achilles heel of this strategy is once again the way of trying to solve the problem. The European Union is a superpower regulatingbut it is a secondary actor in the field of creation and innovation. Both the US and China do not stop investing billions of dollars from the private sector to develop new AI chips or models. Meanwhile, Brussels responds with AI surveillance agencies and bureaucratic obstacles to the companies it precisely wants to try to promote. Hello Linux. In the document published by the EC, an open source strategy is repeatedly mentioned as an essential weapon to avoid dependence on foreign suppliers. Operating systems such as Linux and developments with this philosophy can undoubtedly provide a basic pillar to be able to develop competitive projects, and of course there are already movements that aim to replace proprietary solutions such as Microsoft Office with open source solutions such as LibreOffice. reality is harsh. The harsh economic and technological reality is that in many segments Europe does not have companies that can compete with the technological giants of the US. One of these segments is precisely that of cloud infrastructure: Amazon, Microsoft and Google dominate this market imperially, and although the intention is to change to “sovereign” clouds; The question is, which one? It is true that there are some companies such as OVH (France) or T-Systems (Germany) that have their own infrastructure, but they are still far from their American rivals. Worrying precedents. In 2020 Europe launched the GAIA-X projecta large cloud platform that was theoretically going to make it possible to face the three large hyperscalers in the US. Dozens of companies were going to get involved in an ambitious project that six years later is in a state that is difficult to define: the official website publishes news frequently and there is a specification and code which, for example, talk about GAIA-X 3.0 ‘Danube’, but it does not seem that at the moment this platform is being used in a practical way. The money comes, but from outside. And while the EU becomes entangled in regulation and ethical debates, the projects that should theoretically boost that digital sovereignty are weakening it. Investment in data centers in Europe is a good example: practically all those that want to be built They are simply delegations of large US technology companies. A wonderful utopia. Digital sovereignty is a logical objective as the world is currently moving, but in the EU they seem to confuse priorities once again. That sovereignty is not gained by prohibiting or regulating foreign technology. You win by making yours so competitive that the rest of the world has no choice but to use it. That requires a lot of work and a lot, a lot of capital investment. Not even the European Court of Auditors trusts for something like this to come to fruition. Image | Rafael Garcin In Xataka | The European Union knows that the US has stopped being a reliable partner: its new agreement with India aims to compensate for it

The European Union is successfully demolishing hundreds of dams across the continent. It’s for our good

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When Tore Sorebakken and a team of workers reached the Vinstra River in the heart of Norway in December 2025, no one knew what they were looking for. But when they emptied the pond, drilled dozens of holes and installed 750 kilos of explosives, local authorities stopped them and asked them what why were they trying to destroy that natural waterfall. Sorebakken, surprised, had to explain to them that this was actually a dam built at the beginning of the 20th century to facilitate the transportation of wood and generate a minimum amount of hydroelectric energy. The locals had completely forgotten about it: as I say, they had no idea that it was a human infrastructure. And that is a beautiful metaphor for the enormous abandonment that European rivers have suffered for decades. Free the rivers. Six years ago, the demolition of old dams and clogged weirs was anecdotal in Europe. But in 2024 it came into force European Union Nature Restoration Regulation. It sought to return 25,000 kilometers of river to “free-flow” status before 2030. Since then (since before, really, because there were countries that began to implement it before it came into force) we have had five consecutive years of historical highs. In 2025, according to Dam Removal Europe annual reportat least 603 barriers were removed on the continent. This allowed more than 3,740 kilometers of river to be reconnected. The ‘more’ in the previous paragraph is because reconnection data is only available for 198 of the 603 barriers removed. But why do we want to ‘reconnect kilometers of river’? There are many data, but one that is especially clear is that More than 42% of European freshwater fish species are threateneds and about two-thirds are at risk of being so. Whether we like it or not, 9 out of 10 natural disasters in the European Union in the last decade have had to do with water. And having the rivers full of forgotten structures is part of the problem. ‘Taking back control’ of rivers is essential to reduce the risks of contemporary European society. But that will have consequences, right? This can be read in many places: that European policies of “dam demolition” aggravate droughts. The problem is, of course, that is inaccurate. At least, if we go by the majority of the demolitions. Almost everything that is being torn down are weirs of less than two meters. That is, small barriers that do not store water, but rather raise the sheet to divert flow to an irrigation canal, hydroelectric plant or mill. In fact, most of them should already be demolished because the concessions that allowed them have expired, but no one has paid special attention to it. Until now. Image | Red Zeppelin In Xataka | “In the next ten years, Spain and Latin America are going to suffer (a lot) with water,” Robert Glennon (University of Arizona)

The European Commission wants to sweep Huawei off the map. Spain has told him not so quickly

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The European Commission lhas been trying to expel Huawei for years of their telecommunications networks. And that intention wants to become a binding law, one that would exclude all Chinese teams within a period of 36 months. But there are two countries acting as a retaining wall: Spain and Germany. what’s happening. The European Commission wants to veto Huawei and ZTE citing security reasons. Through a review of the Cybersecurity Regulation, it proposes mandatory elimination of high-risk suppliers. The current draft establishes the mandatory recall of equipment provided by “high-risk suppliers”, assuming a formal veto for Chinese telecommunications companies. The Spain case. In Spain we have a problem with this intention. Telefónica renewed its 5G core contract with Huawei in 2024 and valid until 2030. As relevant information, this 5G core was renewed with the Chinese manufacturer for private equipment, but the contracts for government institutions and business services were awarded to Nokia. In other words, the most sensitive infrastructure is already in European hands. Vodafone –now controlled by Zegona–, maintains the majority of its network with Huawei technology, and although MásOrange has been reducing the presence of the Chinese brand in its equipment for some time (less than 40% in 2027). In short, Large Spanish operators have been using Huawei equipment for years despite the EU’s warnings, and they do not seem willing to simply sweep it off the map. The German case. Something similar happens in Germany. Huawei is still present in more than 60% of the country’s antennas, and although progressive withdrawal plans are already underway, the schedule imposed by Brussels does not seem realistic. Fighting tooth and nail. Both countries have warned the Commission of their concerns in this regard: vetoing China from the European network infrastructure may provoke retaliation, in addition to making the deployment of the network significantly more expensive.to artificial intelligence infrastructure which Europe has been dreaming of for a year and a half. The EU Council requires a majority to approve this plan, so Spain and Germany can look for allies to try to stop it. This would allow the process to be delayed, require modifications and exceptions in the draft, or even end the proposal if it fails to move forward. The possible outcome. With such fierce opposition, the most likely outcome is that there will be no victory for anyone. Spain and Germany may knock down the proposal completely, but they do have enough muscle to deform it. It seems inevitable that, sooner or later, Huawei will disappear from European telecommunications, but the deadlines will not be as immediate as Europe intends, nor is it ruled out that there will be specific exceptions if countries demand it. In Xataka | I tested four Huawei devices at once to evaluate their ecosystem: great hardware, lacks glue

This European alternative to Google Drive is a three-in-one that is now discounted

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There are few things I hate more than wanting to take a photo. and the cell phone tells me that I have no free space. I admit that it is my fault, because I have photos on my phone from more years ago than I would like to admit. I don’t know if the same thing will happen to you, but the alternative that is presented to me is to go to cloud storage and there, as a general rule, we usually go to the clouds of companies like Google, Apple or Microsoft. But we have quality European alternatives. What’s happening? That we may not want a subscription anymore if it has a high price. One of these European alternatives is Internxt, which right now has a promo active that could be great for just that: we can try a month from 1.57 euros if we use the code ‘XATAKA’. Internxt – One month trial The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Cloud storage that includes VPN It is a good alternative if we are looking for that extra storage in a European cloud (in fact, Internxt is a company of Spanish origin). This promo gives us the first month of your annual subscription at a super attractive price, then costs the full price, which is 9.99 euros per month. We also have another alternative, which is to choose your ‘lifetime’ subscription, in which we will pay only once and that’s it. The price of this one, with the code ‘XATAKA’, is 298.87 euros. But what does Internxt stand out for? The prices that we highlight a little above correspond to the cheapest subscription that this company has (we will talk about the other two a little further down). The first thing, of course, is your cloud storage: offers 1TB. Their service also has end-to-end encryption. That means, in short, that not even Internxt itself can access them. It also has two-factor authentication. Another point of Internxt that is worth highlighting and that not all clouds comply with is that It is open source and transparent. This is made public through GitHub and can be reviewed and verified by anyone interested. It is a way to ensure that you do not have any type of back door through which our files or data end up in the hands of third parties. But, beyond cloud storage, it also stands out because it includes an encrypted VPN and an antivirus within the subscription. If at any time we have thought about getting one of these two tools (or both), Internxt is a good option that would save us from having more subscriptions. Finally, as we mentioned before, there are two more Internxt plans. Both include more cloud storageas well as other tools. As with the one above, using the code ‘XATAKA’ we can benefit from a month with a fairly large discount. We leave you, as an outline, what both include and their price: Premium Plan: 3 TB of storage, VPN, antivirus, cleaner and other additional features per 3.15 euros the first month and 19.99 euros per month for the rest of the year (or 456.17 euros if we choose the ‘lifetime’ plan). Ultimate Plan: 5 TB of storage, VPN, antivirus, cleaner, meet and other additional features per 4.72 euros the first month and 29.99 euros per month for the rest of the year (or 613.47 euros if we choose the ‘lifetime’ plan). Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Internxt In Xataka | 61 European alternatives to Google, X, Gmail, Chrome, Maps, DropBox, Google Drive, WhatsApp and other popular services In Xataka | Google Drive alternatives: the best cloud storage services for your files

If the question is what the European Orion module is doing among giant speakers, the answer is NASA’s extreme tests

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When we talk about Artemis We almost always look in the same place: NASA, the SLS rocketthe Orion capsule and that plan to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon. It makes sense, because the United States leads the program and a good part of the space imagination continues to revolve around its missions. But that reading falls short. Artemis is not just an American story.It is also an international architectureand in that architecture Europe has a much more important piece than it usually seems at first glance. That role has just been realized in a very visible milestone. Airbus Space recently announced that ESM-3, Orion’s third European Service Module and the unit destined for Artemis III, had its four solar wings installed. It is a powerful image because it summarizes well the nature of the project: an American ship with an essential part developed on the other side of the Atlantic. The module, built by the aerospace giant for the European Space Agency, will use those wings to provide electrical power to Orion during its mission, although there is still work to be done before the assembly can be considered ready to fly. The ESM has a much deeper function than a picture of newly installed solar panels may suggest. In the Orion architecture, this module is placed under the capsule where the astronauts travel and concentrates systems that are essential for the mission. NASA explains that provides electricity, propulsion, thermal control, air and waterin addition to serving as support to the ship during flight. That is why its role is not understood as a symbolic contribution, but as an operational part of the vehicle. A test on the ground, between speakers and noise The following, however, was not one of those scenes that we immediately associate with space. Airbus Space noted on May 6 that the next step was an acoustic test, a ground test designed to see how the spacecraft responds to the extreme launch environment. Simply put: before thinking about docking, orbits or manned missions, the module had to deal with the noise and vibrations that occur when the rocket takes off. That trial has already begun to materialize. NASA has shown the Orion service module for Artemis III during its acoustic tests at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by a wall of high-powered speakers to simulate the sound and vibrations of launch. According to the center, these tests help measure how the structure responds, verify the physical integrity of the spacecraft, protect sensitive avionics and propulsion interfaces, and detect potential problems on the ground well before launch day. This type of test is known as direct field acoustic testor D-FAT, and involves surrounding space hardware with an array of high-power speakers to reproduce the acoustic environment of launch. In equivalent testing of the Orion European Service Module, ESA has spoken of more than 200 speakers and more than 140 decibels. It’s not a new rarity: NASA already submitted Apollo vehicles underwent vibroacoustic testing in the 1960s to see how their structures and systems responded to the noise and vibrations expected during flight. That this test has arrived now does not make the module a ready-to-fly piece, but it does mark another advance in Orion’s preparation for Artemis III. And there the context matters, because the mission in which this module must participate is no longer counted exactly the same as it was a few months ago. Artemis III was for a long time the mission associated with the return of astronauts to the lunar surface, but NASA has rearranged the calendar and now places it as a demonstration mission in low Earth orbit. The plan involves launching four astronauts in Orion, on the SLS, to rehearse rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one or two commercial lunar landing vehicles from SpaceX and Blue Origin. It is not the end of the lunar goal, but an intermediate step to test an architecture that still needs to fit many pieces. The interest of this module is best understood precisely because of this new role of Artemis III. If the mission will be used to verify docking and operations with commercial vehicles, Orion will have to act as a manned platform within a much broader test than a simple test flight. In this scenario, the ESM-3 is not a peripheral contribution, but rather an integrated part of the ship in which the astronauts will travel. Europe, therefore, does not appear only in the cooperation communications: it appears in the machinery that has to make the mission work. The paradox sums up the moment quite well. Europa has just completed a visible part of the preparation of the module that will travel with Orion, and its next test has not been on the Moon, not even in orbit, but among noise, vibrations and speakers within a test on the ground. That is also the reality of Artemis: large lunar objectives supported by a long succession of technical, industrial and often inconspicuous steps. In that chain, ESM-3 makes it clear that the return to the lunar surface is not being prepared only from the United States. Images | Airbus Space | POT In Xataka | The Earth has had a traveling companion for millions of years and we don’t know where it came from, but there is a ship ready to give us answers

a blow to European railway monopolies

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The European Commission has presented a legislative package that forces large railway operators to open their sales platforms to other companies. And Renfe, the main operator in Spain, is in the spotlight. Platforms. Buying a train ticket in Europe continues to be, in many cases, an odyssey. Especially when the trip crosses borders or involves combining different operators. The European Commission esteem that on average it takes 70% longer to book a train journey than to do the same with a flight. And part of the blame lies with the large historical operators, such as Renfe in Spain, Deutsche Bahn in Germany or SNCF in France, which control their own sales platforms and have few incentives to give visibility to their rivals. What exactly does Brussels propose? The Commission has presented a legislative package that directly targets this dominant position. The rule obliges any operator that has a market share equal to or greater than 50% in the national railway market to open its digital ticket sales platform to other companies that request it. In practice, whoever enters the Renfe website should also be able to see the Iryo and Ouigo tickets, not just the Renfe ones. The same would happen in the rest of the countries with their own dominant operators. But not only that. Large operators will also have to share your ratesdiscounts and schedules dynamically and in real time with travel agencies and digital platforms such as Booking, Omio, Trainline, eDreams, and must do so under fair and non-discriminatory commercial conditions. Until now, according to the Commission itself, these platforms only had access to the most expensive rates, not the complete catalog. Why Renfe is in the center. It is not the first time that the Spanish operator appears in this debate. In 2023, the European Commission opened a formal investigation to assess whether Renfe could have abused its dominant position in the Spanish market by refusing to provide its real-time data to competing ticketing platforms, according to share from El Diario. The new regulation would settle this type of situation generally for all of Europe. The Commission emphasize that the operators with greater brand recognition, the heirs of the old railway monopolies, have become the usual reference for the traveler, which gives them a structural advantage to exclude competition from their ecosystem. The other side of the coin. The change is not only against Renfe in Spain. And if the Spanish operator must open its platform to Iryo and Ouigo, it would also have the right to have its tickets appear on the dominant websites of other countrieslike SNCF Connect in France (as much as it has resisted until now). That could facilitate its expansion in the European market. Even so, the impact for historical operators is double and not at all comfortable. And just as they point out in El País, on the one hand, they must show their commercial strategy in advance to their direct competitors. On the other hand, more competition in ticket sales increases pressure on margins and commissions. The single ticket, the great novelty for the traveler. Along with the opening of platforms, the Commission proposes to create a single ticket that covers routes operated by different companies in a single transaction. A trip from Madrid to Brussels with Renfe, SNCF and SNCB would have a single document. And if there is a delay in one of the sections, the passenger would be covered, since the company responsible for the incident assumes the assistance, the transportation alternative and the corresponding financial compensation. There is an important nuance: if the problem is not caused by the train but rather that whoever sold the ticket did not respect the minimum connection times, the responsibility falls on the sales platform, which must refund the entire ticket and compensate the passenger. up to 75% of its price. What happens now? This proposal is, for now, just that, a proposal. The negotiation still remains to be concluded between the Commission, the European Parliament and the Member States. If the process progresses without major obstacles, Brussels estimates that the changes could be operational in less than twelve months from the entry into force of the regulation. The European Commissioner for Transport, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, was one of those in charge of presenting the initiative together with the executive vice-president Raffaele Fitto, counting that “we went from building networks to serving passengers.” Cover image | Jose Garcia In Xataka | If the question is what Renfe can do to stop Ouigo and Iryo, the answer is not in the prices

Germany is the European mecca of the combustion car. That Spain becomes the electricity supplier goes through Mérida and 800 million Chinese

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Hunan Yuneng International Spain New Energy Battery Material SLU already has its excavator blades in Mérida. The Chinese battery manufacturing company You already have the land and have obtained the building license from the town hall, so the preparation work on the ground has already been visible for a few days. The speed with which one of the strategic electric car factories is materializing is scandalous: in February we were talking of environmental approval and be careful because it is expected that be operational at the end of the year. That Hunan Yuneng has achieved it in such a short time says a lot about both parties involved. The factory is going from strength to strength. The plant will produce cathode materials for cells LFP batteriesmore specifically lithium iron phosphate, a technology that is emerging due to its lower cost, greater durability and better thermal resistance. As collects Badajoz Newsthis project involves an investment of close to 800 million, will have a productive capacity of up to 300,000 tons per year and will directly generate 500 jobs. According to MotorpasiónIn this first phase there will be an initial investment of about 116–125 million euros of investment and about 160 direct jobs. One of the most revealing developments about the real status of the project is the appearance of an auxiliary satellite industry: the Chinese company Jinhong Gas has constituted formally in Mérida the company ‘Jinhong Gas (Spain) SL’ to directly supply the Hunan Yuneng plant with nitrogen, an essential element for the manufacture of LFP cathode materials. Why is it important. Because it is one of the largest industrial investments captured by Extremadura and the first plant of this type in Europe, as explains the Junta de Extremadura. This makes Mérida strategic, a reference for the European automobile industry from the moment it is operational. LFP batteries are the key to cheap electric cars: they are more affordable because lithium and iron are cheaper than nickel or cobalt and they are also safer and resist charging cycles better, which makes them more durable. It is true that its energy density is lower than those of NMC chemicals, but due to longevity and cost they are ideal in the entry or medium segment, precisely where Europe needs it most compared to China. Furthermore, producing the cathode material on European soil is almost a necessity by law and a process that opens doors to aid such as Auto+ plan. Context: the lithium triangle. Extremadura has been gaining weight in the electric car supply chain for years. In Navalmoral de la Mata there is already a plant in the oven to produce complete batteries. It was initially intended for NMC batteries, but has pivoted to manufacture LFP accumulators. On the other hand, in the surroundings of Cáceres it is believed that there is one of the largest lithium deposits in Europealthough exploiting it is another story: is paralyzed after the neighborhood opposition and environmental platforms. However, the European Commission has mineral and rare earth exploitation projects in its portfolio. three located in Extremadura of the seven total in the Spanish state. Unblocking it would mean that the region could control extraction, cathode material production and battery assembly, all in the same territory: just what the Critical Raw Materials Act It has been encouraging for years without much success. The manufacturing of electric cars and their parts in Spain speaks Chinese. Chinese brands have understood that the way to avoid European tariffs on vehicles manufactured in China is that they have a shortcut to negotiations with Brussels: produce directly on European soil. Spain, which abstained from voting on those tariffshas become your favorite destination. Yes, but. The structural weak point that we have already reflected but that is worth remembering: the factory will produce lithium iron phosphate, but the lithium it needs to do so will not come from Extremadura, but probably from Australia, Chile or again China. According to the IEA report on critical minerals 2023China controls more than 60% of global lithium refining, so strategic sovereignty is relative. On the other hand, we also have to keep an eye on employment: the experience with other Chinese plants in Europe, such as lfrom CATL in Zaragozahas generated debate about what proportion of the initial qualified personnel comes from the investing country. It’s fine print that should be on the table and resolved before the machinery is operational. In Xataka | MG, BYD, Lynk&Co, Omoda: who’s who of Chinese car manufacturers in Spain In Xataka | China appears to dominate the global market for electric car batteries. He has an obvious Achilles heel Cover | Michael Fousert and Rafa Esteve

The European Union is very clear about the future of its network infrastructure: there will not be a single Chinese device

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Europe is intensifying its battle against Chinese equipment, both in its electrical network and in its telecommunications infrastructure. The European Commission has again recommended earlier this week the exclusion of Huawei and ZTE equipment by local telecommunications operators, paving the way for a review of the Cybersecurity Regulation in which it is proposed mandatory elimination of high-risk suppliers. A new touch. The European Commission has started the week with a reminder: member states must exclude Huawei and ZTE equipment from their telecommunications network. In January of this year, Europe published a draft establishing the mandatory withdrawal of “high-risk suppliers”, posing a formal veto on Chinese telecommunications companies. It is a particularly sensitive issue in Spain, where communities like Catalonia have ignored European recommendations and they have renewed again recently with companies that use Huawei equipment. The Generalitat case. Last March, the Generalitat of Catalonia renewed its contract with XCAT. A budget of 127 million euros to maintain Huawei as the main equipment supplier, despite the EU notice and challenges from Telefónica and Cellnex that paralyzed the process for a few weeks. {“videoId”:”x9gqo70″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR MOBILE if you are not using AI like this”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”617″} In addition to the Catalan case, practically a third of Spanish 5G networks are from Huawei, with an estimated replacement cost between 400 and 1,000 million euros. Beyond. It is not the only measure that Europe wants to implement against Chinese suppliers. The Commission also wants to protect itself in relation to renewable energies, vetoing access to community funds to those projects using converters made in China. “Our risk assessments have confirmed threats, including manipulation of electricity production parameters, interruption of electricity generation and even unauthorized access to operational data. In practice, this could mean a blackout, a remote blackout of Member States’ networks leading to nationwide power outages.” As with the network infrastructure, according to the Commission, this measure responds to a shield for security reasons, applicable from next November 1. Again, a blow to the giant Huawei, one of the main suppliers of solar inverters in Spain. In Xataka 6G is not being developed to improve mobile speed: it is geopolitics and China is going with the accelerator to the table The Chinese response. China is no stranger to the measures being prepared by Europe, and has made it clear that it considers these proposed acts to be discriminatory and harmful to trade. Without detailing his plans, he has made it clear that he will take countermeasures. The Swedish case. Decisions have consequences, and Sweden is a country that knows very well what happens if you ban Huawei on your telecommunications equipment. In 2020, the country banned the use of telecommunications equipment from Chinese manufacturers under the argument of national security. Although a priori this was a lifeline for Ericsson, the consequences were just the opposite. China retaliated, and China Mobile expelled Eriscsson from its network infrastructure, going from 11% market share to 2%. In case Europe hits China again. In Xataka | There is a crucial technology for the deployment of AI and China is also securing the lead: 6G (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The European Union is very clear about the future of its network infrastructure: there will not be a single Chinese device was originally published in Xataka by Ricardo Aguilar .

Mistral has a new AI model. The good news is that it is absolutely European; the bad one, which is absolutely mediocre

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The French startup Mistral has just launched Mistral Medium 3.5an open-weight AI model that is the great European exponent in an industry absolutely dominated by China—which competes directly with this type of projects—and by the US. And if this is the best they can do, it seems Europe has a problem. Mediocre. This is a “dense” model with 128 billion parameters and a context window of 256,000 tokens. While models with Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture only activate a subset of the total parameters to achieve enviable efficiency and capacity, Mistral activates them all. That makes it much less efficient, but theoretically it should make its performance promising. And that’s the problem. Which it is not. Benchmarks. Pedro Domingos, professor of deep learning at the University of Washington, he expressed it very well: “Mainstream AI companies brag about how their model is much better in benchmarks. Soo Mistral brags about how their model is much worse.” It is true that the models with which it is compared are larger in total number of parameters, but as we will see later, even taking that into account, they are cheaper and theoretically more efficient thanks to the use of that MoE architecture in many of them. The model, however, unifies the previous catalog and follows the market trend of being able to establish the desired level of reasoning (reasoning_effort) as a parameter. Bad results. And he is somewhat right: Mistral does not seem to have problems showing the results of various benchmarks in which it performs poorly, but it also performs poorly with models that are by no means the most recent or powerful on the market. Thus, it is compared with Claude Sonnet 4.5/4.6, with Kimi K2.5, with GLM-5.1 or with Qwen 3.5 397B. In almost all cases (except GLM 5.1) there are already more recent and powerful versions of all of them. Not so far from local models. In fact Medium 3.5 scored 77.6% in SWE-Bench Verified, a programming test in which Qwen3.6-27b It reaches 72.4% with a fundamental difference: you can run it “for free” (with the appropriate hardware, and you paying the electricity bill) with a relatively affordable machine. More expensive (and somewhat more restrictive). If we use it via API, Mistral Medium 3.5 costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.5 per million output tokens. GLM-5.1 costs 1.4/4.4 respectively, and Kimi K2.5 costs 0.5/2.8 respectively. Its recent successor, Kimi K2.6, costs 0.95/4, and it is significantly better than Mistral being cheaper. There is a curious fact: Mistral uses a “modified MIT license” instead of the traditional Apache 2.0, and indicates that this model can be used commercially or non-commercially except for “high-income” companies. Chasing Anthropic. In addition to the model itself, the company has presented the so-called remote scheduling agents using Mistral Vibe CLI to, for example, send pull requests to GitHub in an automated way. It also has the so-called “Work Mode” in LeChat, allowing multi-step tasks to be managed autonomously. These are tools clearly intended to strengthen Mistral’s role as a base for scheduling agents, which is the path that has worked fantastically for Anthropic. Your advantage: being European. The only great strength of this model is that it has been developed by a European startup, and that gives it clear visibility at a time when many EU countries they talk about digital sovereignty. It is the only Western model that seems to want to compete with China in the field of open weight models, which is good news, but the truth is that in terms of performance it does not seem that the Mistral Medium 3.5 is going to perform competitively. The geopolitical security network. That, together with the fact that it costs more than its competitors, makes the decision to use it difficult unless for those who prioritize clearly that European origin. That is Mistral’s ace in the hole, and they are taking advantage of perfectly. The company has recently obtained financing to create data centers in Europe, and is nourished and fed by this new obsession with minimize dependency of North American Big Tech. In Xataka | The CEO of Mistral sends a message to Europe: the end of being the technological vassal of the United States

Manufacturing 60 machines a year may not seem like much. In practice, those of the European ASML are setting the pace of AI

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Sixty machines a year sounds like a lot when we talk about artificial intelligence. We are used to huge numbers: data centers, billions of dollars and increasingly ambitious models. But AI also depends on things that are much more physical and difficult to scale. And that’s where ASMLa European company that manufactures lithography equipment to produce advanced chips, becomes a difficult piece to avoid. This year it will manufacture at least 60 machines. And they will be indispensable. To get an idea of ​​scale, artificial intelligence does not rely solely on better models. Just a few days ago, Reuters pointed out that Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet plan to allocate more than $600 billion in capital spending in 2026 to expand their AI infrastructure. These players need semiconductor manufacturers, who need advanced technology to produce the chips that will equip their customers’ future data centers. Here ASML appears in all its dimension. The Dutch company does not manufacture the chips that will end up in data centers, but it does manufacture the machines that allow the most advanced ones to be produced at scale. For now, because China is accelerating this raceis the only global supplier of this equipment, known as extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. This position explains why a company based in Veldhoven has become such a relevant piece for a career that is usually viewed from Silicon Valley or Taiwan, but that also has a decisive role in Europe. The European manufacturer that sets the pace for AI The striking thing is that the great jump translates into a very specific figure. The data comes to us from the last presentation of the firm’s financial results, specifically those of the first fiscal quarter of 2026. Roger Dassen, VP and CFO of ASML, pointed out that they plan to manufacture at least 60 standard EUV machines in 2026. That is 36% more than those sold in 2025. In other words: in an industry that is measured in gigantic investments, significantly increasing production means moving to dozens of machines, not hundreds or thousands. By 2027, the firm hopes to reach at least 80 units. TWINSCAN EXE:5000 Manufacturing more units is not as simple as expanding an assembly line. ASML’s most advanced lithography equipment has a size comparable to that of a medium bus and they are among the most complex devices ever created. They are huge systems, extremely precise and assembled for months in clean roomswith purified air to avoid any contamination. The reason is simple: in this process, a single dust particle can disrupt production. That’s why scaling doesn’t just depend on having more orders on the table. There is a part of this history that remains outside the ASML factories, but that weighs almost as much as its own production. Their customers also need to build clean rooms to install the machines they purchase, a task that requires specialized labor, electrical connections, technical expertise and abundant available power. It is a basic condition for these dozens of pieces of equipment to later translate into more real manufacturing capacity. In other words: the machine matters, but the place prepared to receive it and put it to work also matters. Then there’s everything that happens before one of those systems leaves the Dutch company. Their equipment is built with components from more than 5,000 suppliersso increasing the pace requires that entire network to move forward at once. If one of those links does not arrive, the whole may suffer. And talent adds another difficulty: in the south of the Netherlands, many technical profiles are already in the company or in your supply chain. That’s why Veldhoven’s signature searches for candidates at Dutch and foreign universitieswithout weakening the partners you need to grow. That is the reverse of a figure that, in isolation, may seem small. Sixty machines don’t sound like much in an industry that talks about gigantic models, data centers and huge budgets. But what we have seen is that each of these units is part of a physical, technical and human chain that is much more difficult to accelerate than it seems. This boom is precisely what has helped consolidate ASML as the European company with the highest stock market valueahead of names like LVMH either Hermes. AI is also at play here on the Old Continent. Images | ASML (1, 2) In Xataka | ASML has the most in-demand and advanced lithography machines in the world. And now also, his Lego set

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