Europe could end up keeping the companies founded on its soil while losing the jobs, investment and growth they create later — all because its businesses get access to cutting-edge AI tools later than their competitors, according to Edwin Mata, CEO of Barcelona-based tokenization company Brickken.
By Keisha Williams | October 3, 2026
The Hook: A Slow Leak, Not a Dramatic Exit
Mata’s warning, made in comments to crypto.news, is not about companies packing up and leaving Europe in protest. It is quieter and, he argues, more dangerous. Founders do not need to relocate an entire company for Europe to lose out. Hiring engineers overseas, opening a sales operation near investors, or choosing another country for a product launch can gradually pull economic activity out of the region — one decision at a time.
“Europe can therefore retain the original company while losing much of its future hiring, investment and value creation,” Mata said.
For anyone invested in European crypto and blockchain companies, this matters directly. Brickken is a real-world asset tokenization platform — a company that turns things like equity and debt into digital tokens. If firms like it grow slower or expand abroad because their teams lack the same AI tools as rivals, the value eventually accrues somewhere else.
Unequal Access: The Products in Question
At the center of Mata’s argument are differences in the availability of several AI products, including Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots. In his account, Muse is available in the United States and Canada, while European Pro subscribers cannot access Dots even though the service remains available through Business Premium channels.
Mata was careful not to overclaim. He cautioned against interpreting these differences as proof that European regulators had banned the products. “Those differences do not establish that regulators prohibited the products, but they illustrate why access needs to be examined carefully,” he said. Think of it like two shops on the same street where one gets new stock months earlier — nobody passed a law, but the shop that waits loses customers all the same.
His core point is about time. Businesses that use new AI tools sooner can change their working methods, test ideas, train employees and acquire customers while others wait. By the time access reaches the second market, the early users may have built advantages that go far beyond finishing individual tasks faster. “The cost is cumulative,” Mata said.
Why Founders Now Shop for AI Access Like Tax Rates
According to Mata, access to leading AI tools has quietly joined the classic checklist founders use when deciding where to expand — right alongside funding, taxation, customers and recruitment conditions. A team able to test products earlier and automate more work in another market could direct its next investment there. Investors then back the businesses with the most credible growth prospects, and skilled workers follow the companies with the resources to build ambitious products.
For small teams especially, Mata pointed to AI agents that handle research, coding and administrative work between instructions — software that acts like a junior employee who never sleeps. Whether a startup can use those systems, he argued, can affect profit margins, customer retention and whether the company stays competitive at all.
He also raised an ownership concern. Buying foreign technology is normal, he said, but lasting dependence becomes a weakness when domestic companies struggle to build competing services. Under that scenario, European customers end up paying for tools whose profits, ownership and major business decisions sit somewhere else — and successful technology companies then attract more funding, workers and customers in the markets where they actually operate.
Europe’s Response So Far
Policy makers are not ignoring the problem. In June, Austria’s State Secretary for Digitalization, Alexander Proell, sent a letter urging the EU to consider taking a strategic stake in Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, as reported by crypto.news on June 29. According to the letter, Proell wanted Europe to avoid losing access to important AI advances because of decisions made outside the region, while acknowledging practical challenges and likely skepticism toward the proposal.
European reforms have also extended AI compliance deadlines and expanded support for smaller businesses, easing some of the regulatory burden. But Mata’s argument suggests the bigger risk is not the rules themselves — it is the gap in capability that opens while everyone argues about them.
The Verdict: Watch Where the Jobs Go
Mata’s warning boils down to this: in an economy where AI tools increasingly decide who wins, unequal access acts like a slow tax on European companies — including the blockchain and tokenization firms building the next generation of financial infrastructure. Nobody will announce the departure. It will show up in hiring data, in where product launches happen, and in which markets capture the next wave of investment. For investors, the signal to watch is simple: if European crypto and tech firms keep announcing their expansions — and their engineering hires — outside Europe, the quiet leak he describes has already started.
The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
the slow leak framing from mata is spot on. nobody announces they are leaving, they just quietly hire the next 20 engineers in singapore
His two shops analogy is exactly right. No regulator banned anything, one shop just gets the new stock months later and loses the customers anyway.
The two shops analogy works until you remember the shop with late stock also charges its businesses the highest energy bills. Europe stacks the disadvantages, AI access is just the newest layer.
The energy bills point is underrated. An Italian startup I advise pays triple what its Dutch competitor pays for the same GPUs, and now they wait longer for model access too. Mata is right that its a death by a thousand cuts, not one dramatic exit
triple the gpu cost and late model access, that combo is brutal for any nordic founder doing ai work. the slow leak mata describes is already visible in our local meetups, half the seniors relocated
mata’s point about companies staying while the hiring quietly moves abroad is the uncomfortable one. nobody notices a slow leak until the tax receipts look bad
a barcelona tokenization founder saying this carries more weight than another consultant report. brickken hires where the tooling is
europe regulating first and getting compute last, again. been the pattern since gdpr
the gdpr comparison is painfully accurate. we exported the rules and imported the compliance costs while the actual products got built somewhere else