Is Europe actually building sovereign AI—or simply running American models with a European postcode?

In this episode of Means of Production, Kim Isenberg and Peter Thum sit down with PandaOS co-founders Philipp Türker and Marco Szeidenleder to examine what technological sovereignty really means in the age of AI.

The conversation explores Europe’s dependence on US frontier models, why hosting a foreign model in a European data center does not automatically create sovereignty, and whether European companies need to rethink how they control their data, infrastructure, and access to AI.

Philipp and Marco explain why sovereignty should not mean isolation. Instead, it means maintaining optionality: controlling your data and keys, being able to choose between different models, and switching providers “on a random Tuesday without everything breaking.”

They also discuss the potential of local inference and self-hosting, the role of smaller specialized models, the strengths and weaknesses of Europe’s AI ecosystem, and how PandaOS is building a local AI workspace that connects models, tools, agents, applications, and data while keeping control in the hands of the user.

A conversation about AI sovereignty beyond slogans—and what Europe must do if it wants genuine technological independence.

Topics include:

• Europe’s dependence on US AI companies
• What “sovereign AI” actually means
• Local inference and self-hosted models
• Data ownership, security, and control
• Switching models and providers without disrupting operations
• European AI models and infrastructure
• The AI Act and Europe’s regulatory strategy
• PandaOS and the future of local AI workspaces