At the TechBBQ conference in Copenhagen, European investors, founders, and operators spent much of the annual Nordic event debating who should control AI, not just what to build with it. The question of sovereignty aligned with the conference’s theme, “Emerging from Agency,” and gained urgency after Anthropic’s AI models Mythos and Fable became unavailable to users outside Europe earlier this year. That incident pushed many in the European ecosystem to consider whether they should own the models and infrastructure behind the AI wave rather than rent that power from the U.S. and China.
The impact of the Anthropic outage varied among startups. One startup executive told a reporter that the loss of Mythos and Fable seriously disrupted his software team, while another dismissed the problem. The second executive acknowledged that relying on two geopolitical powers for AI could eventually cause Europe severe headaches, but argued that for now, things are still largely fine.
Ellen de Brever, an angel investor and head of partnerships at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Cellerator, said the conference’s theme felt timely as conversations shifted from what AI can do to what people are willing to let it do. She noted that debates at the event were less about smarter machines and more about human judgment and who remains in control. De Brever described the age of AI agents as a story about humans deciding what to give up, not machines gaining agency.
The event featured panels on women’s health, collaboration between Nordic and African ecosystems, and attracting more growth capital to Europe. One session that drew praise from an attendee featured Signal President Meredith Whittaker, who spoke on a panel about whether privacy and AI can coexist. Whittaker criticized AI assistants and agents being integrated into operating systems, citing examples like ChatGPT with iMessage, and called the AI era a “data collection apparatus.” She argued that AI labs use marketing to obscure the collateral consequences of gathering so much data, and said there is still a huge market need for privacy, particularly given sovereignty concerns.
Separately, Emad Mostaque, co-founder of Stability AI and Intelligent Internet, joined a panel on how an agentic workforce will affect the economy and personal sovereignty. Mostaque defined sovereignty as the ability to resist power exerted over you and warned about the concentration of power in a few AI labs. He said that inevitably, every country will be run by AI, and the person who controls the AI controls the country.
Mia Negru, advocacy and engagement director for the nonprofit Life With Artificials, shared her reaction to that panel in a message to the reporter. She said that if intelligent agents perform cognitive work and robots perform physical work, society may face something bigger than another technological revolution. Negru argued that people may need to rethink ownership, work, democracy, economic participation, and eventually who gets to participate in society.
Outside the sessions, attendees gathered at happy hours and rooftop parties, with companies like Lovable, Nvidia, OpenAI, AWS Startups, and HSBC hosting a barbecue in Copenhagen. London-based Ada Ventures hosted a cocktail event, and a speakers dinner took place on an island in the city, followed by an after-party. De Brever said that amid all the conversations about machines, the most memorable moments still came from human connection, face-to-face relationship building, and sharing ideas in ways technology cannot replace.
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