Sam Altman is back with a proposal: an “AI Dividend” for every US citizen, giving them a stake in the wealth created by OpenAI. At the same time, the US Treasury warns that AI could concentrate economic power and create systemic risks. Two moves that look opposite – one redistributive, the other cautious – but they tell the same story: the United States is building a national AI ecosystem with rules, incentives, and a form of digital citizenship. Europe? Still playing catch-up.
Why does this matter for an Italian business? Because while America moves on two fronts – value creation and risk control – Europe is stuck on regulation. While Brussels debates the AI Act, San Francisco is writing contracts. A small manufacturer in Modena selling industrial machinery isn't buying licenses from OpenAI: it's experiencing a widening gap. If AI value stays locked inside US Big Tech, European companies will pay twice: in dollars and in lost skills. We see it every day in the projects we handle: those who automated processes with proprietary tools (e.g., Laravel + APIs) cut costs by 30% in two years. Those waiting for a ready-made solution pay more and depend on someone else's servers.
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We at Meteora Web have a clear position: Altman's “AI dividend” is a brilliant political move, not a philanthropic one. It creates a direct link between US citizens and Big Tech, making any future regulation look like a betrayal of millions of shareholders. For Europe, it's a wake-up call. If we don't build a European AI infrastructure – based on open source, industrial data, and local training – we'll end up as consumers of technology, not owners. We come from accounting: we know what it means to own your assets instead of renting them. A SaaS model works for management software, but for generative AI you need sovereignty. The alternative is paying royalties on every key feature, just like we already do with American clouds.
What to do, concretely? For Italian SMEs: start investing in internal AI skills – even a two-person team learning to integrate open source models (Mistral AI, Llama) can make a difference. For developers: don't just consume third-party APIs; build small specialized agents on your own data. For policymakers: we need real funding for training and European data centers, not just ethics committees. We automated invoicing and accounting for a retail client using PHP and public APIs: every line of code written on national soil is a piece of sovereignty. The alternative? Watching the US AI dividend and paying the bill.
