How Europe’s tech-shy Fortune 500 is embracing AI

That doesn’t compare favorably with the U.S. list, where dynamic tech and pharmaceutical businesses grapple for the top spot alongside retail groups, or even hybrids of tech and retail, namely Amazon. 

There are just 15 tech companies in this year’s Fortune 500 Europe, compared with 49 in the U.S. American tech companies account for 5x more revenue on the list compared with those in Europe. 

That explains some of the large revenue gap between the lists. The U.S. Fortune 500 companies accumulated $18.8 trillion in revenues last year, compared with $14.5 trillion for Europe’s titans. 

While the early winners of the AI boom—NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Google—have been found on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean, legacy businesses are quickly realizing the opportunities of automation.

“There is so much potential…”

Mark Read OBE, CEO of WPP

Peter Oppenheimer, Goldman Sachs’ chief global equity strategist and head of macro research in Europe, told Fortune earlier this year the biggest winners of AI could be the companies that leverage the technology rather than those at its cutting edge, akin to the canal boom of the 18th century.

Amid a widening gap between AI players in the U.S. and the rest of the market, and CEOs’ ongoing tussles over regulation in Europe, businesses on the continent leveraging AI to find efficiencies represent the best chance of Europe closing the gap with the States. 

But the race is on. In his 69-page EU competitiveness report, former ECB president Mario Draghi pointed out that European productivity diverged from the U.S. in the 1990s thanks to a failure to “capitalize on the first digital revolution led by the internet.” 

To avoid falling behind in the latest AI-based revolution, vertically integrating tech in Europe’s industries will be key, Draghi says, and they need to be quick.

“The question for European companies is how they can leverage AI more aggressively, regardless of its origin. There is so much potential for them to take advantage of the billions of dollars being invested globally,” Mark Read OBE, CEO of communications company WPP, told Fortune.

Europe’s AI adopters

The debut of the inaugural Fortune 500 Europe list in 2023 came as businesses were starting to come to terms with the implications of the advent of ChatGPT. Large Language Models (LLMs) allowed every member of a household to utilize the technology, providing them with the first real understanding of its capabilities.

“The topic [of AI] in itself is not new,” Florian Mueller, EMEA head of AI practice at consultancy Bain & Co, told Fortune.

“I think what has changed, and ChatGPT probably marks the real moment of change, is that the velocity of adoption has dramatically increased.” 

Mueller adds that, compared with previous technological revolutions, implementing AI in an organization is relatively affordable.

Early evidence would suggest Europe’s biggest hitters don’t want to be left behind in the latest technological revolution. 

Mueller says that traditionally, AI implementation was typically the remit of industries already handling lots of data, for example, companies working in data communications, banking, and insurance.

He added that the broad tech integration in the last two years has been found in Gen AI.

“Whether it’s using it for software development, for customer assistance, whether it’s supporting knowledge workers in their processes, a lot of uptake in the marketing space. All of those you see literally across the board.”

Volkswagen, the leader of the Fortune 500 Europe in 2024, announced in January that it had launched an AI company, following the introduction of ChatGPT to its vehicles at the start of the year.

Several carmakers are using LLMs as in-car assistants, while AI is creating the bedrock for a potential future of autonomous driving.

Shell, a predominately fossil fuel-based company founded nearly 120 years ago, has also embraced the use of AI across its operations. The company uses reinforcement learning to help optimize its drilling operations, has partnered with C3 AI to develop predictive maintenance capabilities, and used machine learning for inventory and demand forecasting.

The pharmaceutical sector, which boasts Fortune 500 Europe hitters like Roche Group, Novartis, and Sanofi, is quickly leveraging AI in cutting-edge drug discovery. 

The shift, Mueller says, has created a war for talent as non-tech companies battle to recruit data scientists and machine learning engineers to help transform their operations.

Is it real?

The proliferation of AI adoption was met with fanfare among investors, who cheered companies’ enthusiasm for tech that promised to boost productivity. This early in the game, though, there aren’t yet many examples of this investment translating into significant returns on investment.

Europe’s banking sector might be the earliest example of an industry that will use AI to enhance profitability.

Evident, an intelligence platform, has drawn up an index of global banks ranked by their AI preparedness levels, breaking it down by talent, innovation, leadership, and transparency. Inevitably, European companies fall behind American ones who put the foundations in place for the AI transition early.

Alexandra Mousavizadeh, co-founder and CEO of Evident, says Evident picked the banking sector as an example of uptake because it represented “mammoth organizations that were going from legacy to trying to become AI first,” and was using AI in roles across its organization.

European banks, including HSBC and Spanish group BBVA, were among the highest Fortune 500 climbers in the last year. But for other companies that have been slow to introduce autonomous systems and hire the sharpest new AI talent, the window of opportunity is closing. 

“When it really comes down to ROI in the next 18 months, they’re just going to pull ahead. And when that starts, the game is over,” Mousavizadeh told Fortune.

Startup DeepL provides translation services for half of the U.S. Fortune 500. David Parry-Jones, DeepL’s chief revenue officer, says there is a lot of noise around LLMs that have made rollout harder across organizations.

“The promise is obviously dramatic on the basis of what these things could do, but the reality of implementation within a large enterprise is not the same,” Parry-Jones told Fortune. 

Regulatory hurdles

Several CEOs, including Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek, have warned of regulatory differences between Europe and the U.S. that could cause Europe to miss out on the latest technological revolution.

Speaking to the FT earlier this week, Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of the $2 trillion Norwegian oil fund, summarized: “In America, you have lots of AI and little regulation, and in Europe, you have little AI and lots of regulation.”

Developing, launching, or just using technology is harder in Europe than it is anywhere else in the world.

Matt Brittin, EMEA president for Google

Matt Brittin, Google’s EMEA president says, in many ways, Europe is in an excellent position on AI.

​​”It has a well-educated workforce and a single market, which could help new innovation scale and benefit everyone rapidly. However, as Mario Draghi’s report last month found, the EU is falling behind its global counterparts when it comes to innovation,” Brittin told Fortune.

Brittin agreed that a particular challenge in the EU was the extent to which regulation on AI was implemented in the region.

“Over the last five years, we’ve seen over 100 new laws that affect the digital economy and society. Of course, there must be clear rules of the road, but these rules are often conflicting, untested, and inconsistently implemented. 

“Put simply, developing, launching, or just using technology is harder in Europe than it is anywhere else in the world. To stay in the global race, the EU needs a new approach: mitigating the risks of new technology while enabling innovation.”