Capital ecosystem of European AI: Patriotic billionaires, development banks, and the evolution of state-finance nexus

The European Union’s strategy for technological sovereignty relies on private capital to fund key sectors like artificial intelligence (AI). However, the structure and composition of this capital ecosystem remain unclear. Using a novel dataset of 110 European AI startups and their 826 funders, this paper maps meso-level investment patterns and identifies the key financial actors underpinning European AI development. Beyond a descriptive mapping, I argue that the EU’s market-based industrial policy empowers a select group of aligned financiers including ‘patriotic billionaires’ as crucial intermediaries in the pursuit of technological sovereignty. This dynamic grants these actors structural potential to shape policy, altering the traditional state-finance relationship. The research suggests a distinctive European model of techno-financing, and analyzes its implications for state power and economic governance in a period of intense geopolitical transformation.