Hangzhou-based start-up DeepSeek made headlines last month with two large language models – V3 and R1 – that have emerged as challengers to OpenAI’s ChatGPT while requiring only a fraction of the cost and computing power to build.

But European tech firms have not yet produced an AI contender on the level of ChatGPT or DeepSeek.

Neil Lawrence, a senior AI fellow at the London-based Alan Turing Institute, noted that Britain was “a long way behind” the US and China in both the development and deployment of the technology.

“Similar applies to most of Europe, but there are encouraging signs in Germany, France, Finland and Switzerland,” Lawrence said.