At TechBBQ, Europe’s AI conversations kept coming back to: Who’s actually in control?

At TechBBQ in Copenhagen, the conversation among investors, founders, and operators from across Europe wasn’t just about what to build with AI, but who should control it. No matter where you were during the annual Nordic conference, from onstage to cocktail hours and after-parties, the chatter kept coming back to how Europe can gain more control over the technology powering AI.

That question of sovereignty — which fittingly matched this year’s theme of “Emerging from Agency” — was especially timely after Anthropic’s AI models Mythos and Fable became unavailable to users outside Europe earlier this year.

The incident led many in the European ecosystem to think seriously about what it means to own the models and the infrastructure underpinning this AI wave, instead of renting that power from the U.S. and China.

One startup exec told me the Mythos and Fable incident seriously disrupted his software team, while another shrugged it off. Sure, the startup exec said, relying on two other geopolitical powers for AI might one day cause Europe severe headaches, but for now, everything is still pretty much OK.

“TechBBQ’s theme of agency felt particularly timely this year as the conversation shifted from what AI can do to what we’re actually willing to let it do,” Ellen de Brever, an angel investor and head of partnerships at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Cellerator, told me during the conference that wrapped up August 27.

There were panels about the future of women’s health, a summit on how the Nordic and African ecosystems can collaborate on innovation and investment , and talks about how to get more growth capital into Europe. AI was an underlying theme in many of the conversations, but as de Brever pointed out, “the debates weren’t about smarter machines, but about human judgment and who gets to stay in the driver’s seat.”

“The age of AI agents isn’t really a story about machines gaining agency,” she continued. “It’s a story about humans deciding what to give up.”

An attendee told me that one of the most refreshing sessions at the event was the panel with Signal President Meredith Whittaker , which I moderated and focused on whether privacy and AI can coexist. Whittaker didn’t mince words, and spoke out against AI assistants and agents being integrated into operating systems, like what ChatGPT is doing with iMessage.

She said this AI era is creating a “data collection apparatus” and that AI labs are using clever marketing to make people forget “about the collateral consequences” of acquiring so much data.