Superintelligence Europe — No. 019

Forbes published its 11th annual 30 Under 30 Europe list on Tuesday, marking two milestones in a single edition: it is the first to be composed entirely of Gen Z honourees, and the first in which the collective funding raised by the class exceeds $900 million — up $100 million on last year. The list recognises 300 young innovators, entrepreneurs, and changemakers across 10 sectors including AI, Finance, Manufacturing and Industry, Science and Healthcare, and Social Impact. Average age: 27. Youngest: 15. 74% are founders or co-founders.

The AI sector is one of the list’s ten categories, joining Finance, Entertainment, Art and Culture, Media and Marketing, Retail and Ecommerce, Science and Healthcare, Social Impact, Sports and Games, and Manufacturing and Industry. Candidates were evaluated by Forbes staff and a panel of judges on funding, revenue, social impact, scale, inventiveness, and potential. The honourees hail from over 20 countries — Germany to Denmark — with London, Zurich, Berlin, and Paris the most frequent home cities.

Germany’s Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation Karsten Wildberger (CDU) gave an interview to Politico's Pro-Newsletter Technologie on Tuesday in which he announced a second “Entlastungskabinett” — a relief cabinet — to be convened before the summer recess, targeting billions of euros in regulatory cost reductions for German businesses. But the more significant part of the interview concerned digital sovereignty. Wildberger stated that 75% of the cloud solutions Germany currently uses come from the major American technology companies, and said he wants to change that direction — both by working with existing US partners and by building European alternatives.

On Palantir — the US data analytics firm whose software is already used by police in Bavaria, Hesse, and North Rhine-Westphalia — Wildberger said he is working with European companies to build an alternative. He did not rule out using Palantir in the interim, saying security takes priority if no comparable European solution exists: “If the alternative is that no comparable solution is available, then for me, security takes precedence.” But his stated preference is European: “My preference is that we develop our own products and companies in Europe that are competitive on the world market.” He also addressed Microsoft dependency directly, and separately called for a European alternative to Starlink in the context of Lufthansa’s decision to offer Starlink connectivity.

Thüga AG — headquartered in Munich and representing Germany’s largest network of municipal service providers, covering approximately 100 public utilities in the energy and water sectors — has signed a framework agreement with Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems division to deliver centralised, sovereign AI solutions to its member utilities. T-Systems became an official Thüga Group partner in 2026. The agreement is tailored to the specific structural challenges of public utilities operating in critical infrastructure: highly sensitive data from network operations, customer management, and regulatory processes that cannot be exposed to non-EU data law jurisdiction.

At the centre of the agreement are Enterprise GPT solutions designed to automate repetitive standard tasks across the Thüga network — process automation and knowledge assistance — with data processing guaranteed exclusively within Europe. The structure prevents individual utilities from having to independently manage AI integration while ensuring that the compliance posture of the entire network is maintained centrally. Digital sovereignty is described in the announcement as increasingly crucial for public utilities: the ability to manage data, systems, and value chains independently, securely, and transparently.

euNetworks, a pan-European digital infrastructure company specialising in data-centre-to-data-centre connectivity, announced Tuesday from Frankfurt that it has been named as a connectivity partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud — one of the first wave of such partners announced for the new platform. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud launched in January 2026 with a €7.8 billion investment, located in Brandenburg, Germany, and structured as a legally distinct cloud environment: infrastructure and operations located entirely within the EU, managed through dedicated European legal entities incorporated under German law, operated by EU citizens, and designed to function independently even if connectivity to AWS’s global infrastructure outside the EU becomes unavailable.

euNetworks’ role is to provide private, direct, secure cloud connectivity to customers accessing the AWS European Sovereign Cloud — maintaining EU data residency throughout the connection. The positioning is deliberate: regulated industries and public sector organisations that need to use cloud infrastructure while complying with GDPR, the EU AI Act, and data residency requirements can access the AWS sovereign environment through euNetworks without routing data outside the EU at any point in the chain.