> Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
edit: formatting
Based on the creator of EU Tech Map having an AI-powered advertising company and the mistakes in the entries, I assume the site was populated using LLMs. For example, LibreOffice is incorrectly listed as being closed source, SaaS and paid: https://eutechmap.com/company/libreoffice
If a germany company gets big it will eat other european markets leaving nothing in those markets and then beg Merz for more immigrants to Germany instead of hiring other europeans.
The list is quite sus ;) did you know that cockroachdb is a German company? :) it’s in the list. And this is like 3rd company in the category that I was checking
https://eutechmap.com/company/cockroachdb
——
On more sad note.
Europe still loves their old money, (hidden) class system and deeply entrenched bureaucracy way too much to allow some plebs to get rich that quickly.
European way of doing things to me feels like fundamentally incompatible with high pace way of doing things in software area.
Personally, I don’t believe that anything significant can come up from places other than US or China. About 10 years ago Russians were doing a lot of “own” stuff (clickhouse comes to mind first), but I suspect that isolation and brain drain will eventually capture them.
To have a sovereign IT sector, we must ENFORCE FLOSS and open hardware in no uncertain terms, rather than copying Big Tech.
Meanwhile, tech companies are continuing to bail into the US the moment they reach significant revenue due to crushing tax and labour costs (see e.g. Oura announcing their departure from Finland yesterday)
Unfortunately the EU and many local governments have chosen to double down on crippling socialism (presumedly to "own Trump") so this continue at an accelerating pace.
First of all, thank you Puppion for posting here! Was happy to see EU Tech Map being talked about on one the most interesting corners of the web.
A few things upfront:
1) What the site is (and isn’t)
The goal is to make it easier to discover European tech companies (EU/EEA/EFTA/UK for now) and, where relevant, find alternatives to commonly used tools. It’s not attempting to claim “we have a European Google/Amazon/Nvidia” today. It’s a directory that helps people answer: “If I want a European vendor in category X, who exists and where are they based?”
2) Accuracy concerns are fair
A couple of you pointed out incorrect entries (LibreOffice classification, CockroachDB origin, etc.). Those are real issues and I’m fixing them. The site is only as useful as the trust people can place in the data.
What I’m doing in the near-term:
- Adding source/provenance per field (HQ, license model, pricing model, category, etc.) so it’s obvious what’s confirmed vs inferred.
- Tightening the validation rules (e.g. OSS status should never be wrong for well-known projects).
- Making it easier to submit corrections and see what changed.
- If you spot bad entries, the most helpful thing you can do is drop the company page + what’s wrong + a source (official docs/site/Wikipedia is fine). I’ll prioritize the ones mentioned here first.
3) The map clustering / addresses
Yep — geocoding is currently too naive in some cases (a few cities end up pinned centrally). That’s being addressed by improving address parsing and allowing companies to set a more accurate location when they claim their page.
4) Performance
The slow load and delayed map pins are on me. I’m already working on:
- better caching
- loading pins progressively
- reducing initial payload
- a simpler “list-first” mode for people who don’t care about the map
5) “Why not use existing sites?”
There are great lists out there. Some focus on product alternatives, some on buy-European movements, some on OSS. This one is trying to combine “ecosystem discovery” (who exists, where, what they do) with “alternatives” browsing. If it ends up redundant, it’ll deserve to lose.
6) Sovereignty / nationalism
I’m not trying to sell nationalism or “Europe first because vibes.” People have different reasons for caring: procurement rules, data residency, risk management, legal exposure, preference for local support, or simply curiosity about the EU tech scene. The directory is just an information layer. Use it if it helps, ignore it if it doesn’t.
Finally, appreciate both the feedback and to some degree criticism — if this becomes genuinely useful, it’ll be because people here kept the quality bar high.
I built this as a hobby project myself and launched it "for fun" just 3 days ago, and it has really exploded online, more than I would ever anticipate. So, please bear with me as I'm working day and night to improve the site.
Super grateful for everyone input! / Dante
Show me a European iPhone, European Microsoft, European Nvidia, etc. Hell, I’ll take a European one man company that can reach all 27 markets.
Europe needs a single market for capital and the removal of legal barriers to extend across the continent, foremost for the little guy. Von der Failen can only add _more_ regulation. Someone wake me when they actually make something easier.
There is not a single European LLM on the same level as US or Chinese models. France's Mistral reached 400M in revenue, but I believe it could have been more relevant if the EU had not slowed everything down with overregulation.
Maybe Europe shouldn’t copy the nationalism, but governments should copy some of the reasons the breeding grounds in the US and China exist. Think about how they got that far, and especially how China caught up so fast.