Multinationals Tell FT That Unclear EU AI Rules Are Steering Investment Toward the US and UK

Major multinationals are now building AI regulatory clarity into their site-selection process the same way they'd weigh tax rates or labor costs, according to reporting from the Financial Times. Executives in banking, industry and tech told the FT they're assessing AI talent, data rules and computing infrastructure before committing new capital, and continental Europe is landing on the wrong side of that ledger more often than the US or UK.

Maria Cristina Bifulco, chief strategy officer at cable maker Prysmian, told the FT that companies have real choices about where to put their next R&D program, manufacturing line or operational investment. If Europe doesn't create the right conditions, she said, those projects move to markets offering more regulatory certainty and a clearer sense of long-term demand.

One large US bank described to the FT a literal traffic-light system it uses to rank countries: whether the government treats AI as a national priority, and whether data protection law lets the bank use client information to train or run AI systems. A bank executive said the firm is less inclined to add headcount in countries rated red, calling the UK "greenish" while several mainland European countries fell into the weaker category.

Laura Houston, co-head of the tech practice at law firm Slaughter and May, told the FT the EU has gone further than any other major economy in regulating AI "on paper," and that the cost and complexity of complying with that framework is now a real factor companies weigh against expanding in the US or Asia instead. Novo Nordisk picked London, not an EU capital, for a new AI hub with Amazon Web Services, citing talent and regulatory approach.

The EU's AI Act imposes tiered obligations depending on how "high-risk" a system is classified, with fines for the most serious violations reaching up to 7% of a company's global annual turnover. Corporate legal teams say they're burning significant hours just interpreting where their products fall on that scale, since standardized technical definitions for what counts as high-risk are still being worked out.

The core industry complaint centers on vagueness rather than the existence of safety rules. Companies say the rules are unclear enough to create legal exposure they can't price in advance. A CFO quoted anonymously in one report framed it as an inability to "allocate capital into environments where the rules of the game are still being written in real time." That specific claim appeared without any named company or verifiable detail attached, unlike the FT's on-record sourcing from Bifulco, Houston and the bank executive.

None of the reporting reviewed here includes an on-record EU official defending the AI Act's design or disputing that it's driving investment elsewhere. The debate as currently reported is almost entirely framed by the companies and law firms bearing the compliance cost, not by the regulators who wrote the rules.

Robin Rombach, CEO of German image-generation startup Black Forest Labs, told AFP that Europe's mindset needs to shift "to one of optimism and to one of opportunity, and not to one of risk and fear," arguing the continent risks falling further behind if it keeps treating AI primarily as a danger to be managed. His company, valued around $3.25 billion and headquartered in both Freiburg and San Francisco, has landed Martin Scorsese as an advisor and is testing physical-AI robotics work with Audi.

Rombach's optimism runs into a more complicated data picture. According to the European Investment Bank, 46% of EU businesses used big data analytics and AI in 2025, compared with 40% in the US, a gap that cuts against the narrative that Europe simply refuses to adopt the technology. The EIB also estimates AI and big data contributed roughly 12% of the EU's aggregate productivity gains between 2019 and 2025.

The funding numbers tell a more concentrated story. European startups raised $17.6 billion in the first quarter of 2026, with $9.2 billion going to AI companies, according to Crunchbase data cited by analyst Gené Teare. The number of deals fell 40% year-over-year in that same period, meaning a handful of large rounds are propping up the headline total while smaller founders compete for a shrinking pool of capital.

The FT's reporting establishes that companies are actively adjusting expansion plans around AI regulatory clarity, and that London specifically has benefited from that recalculation. What isn't established in any of this reporting is whether that shift represents a temporary compliance headache as the AI Act's technical standards get finalized, or a permanent redirection of capital away from the EU. The European Commission has not been quoted defending or explaining its own framework in this cycle of coverage, leaving that half of the argument unanswered for now.