AI Forum: The New Cold War - AI, Chips & Global Power

This meetup at Urbe Hub is designed as an open discussion exploring the evolving global AI landscape and the increasingly strategic competition shaping the future of artificial intelligence.

As AI capabilities accelerate, the conversation is no longer only about better models or products. AI is rapidly becoming a geopolitical and infrastructural race unfolding across the entire AI stack: from semiconductors and data centers, to foundation models, to the consumer platforms that generate and control massive amounts of data.

Together, we’ll explore topics such as:

Open-source vs proprietary AI ecosystems

The AI stack: hardware, model, data, and application layers

The geopolitical competition between the United States, China, and Europe

Semiconductor supply chains, GPUs, and AI infrastructure

Frontier models and the concentration of power around a small number of companies

Why open models such as DeepSeek, Llama, Mistral, and Qwen are reshaping the industry

The role of multimodal data, consumer platforms, and AI distribution

Digital sovereignty, regulation, and Europe’s position in the global AI race

The discussion will reference companies and technologies shaping the current ecosystem, including Nvidia, TSMC, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, DeepSeek, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Mistral AI. We’ll examine how different approaches to AI development (open vs closed, centralized vs distributed, hardware-driven vs efficiency-driven) may influence innovation, economics, and global power over the coming decade.

Particular attention will be given to how China’s AI ecosystem evolved under hardware restrictions from USA.

Developers, founders, researchers, students, policymakers, and anyone interested in the future of AI, infrastructure, and digital sovereignty are welcome to join the discussion.

This is a forum, not a panel. Developers, founders, researchers, students, policymakers, and anyone interested in the future of AI and digital sovereignty are welcome to join the discussion.

📍 Where: Urbe Hub, Rome (inside Città dell'Altra Economia)

📅 When: Tuesday, June 30

🕕 Doors: 6:00 PM

🍷 Aperitivo included

Hosted at Urbe Hub 🏛️

Urbe Hub is Rome's home for builders working with frontier technologies. A coworking and events space for developers, researchers, founders, and anyone working with AI, blockchain, and emerging tech.

We run a continuous programme of workshops, talks, forums, and building sessions on the tools, frameworks, and ideas shaping technology today.

The Hub is also a workspace. If you're looking for a place to build alongside others from Rome's tech scene, come find us.

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