Two stories from the US AI front. Anthropic has discovered a hidden space inside Claude where the model processes concepts before answering — a glimpse into its inner reasoning. Meanwhile, OpenAI is building a super app combining chatbot, voice assistant, web search and payments into a single platform.
Here’s what it means for European and Italian SMEs, which make up 99% of the business fabric and often get tech handed down rather than chosen.
Why it matters
Anthropic’s breakthrough shows LLMs aren’t impenetrable black boxes: you can understand how they reason. That’s a huge leap for transparency and safety. But who gets that access? Only Anthropic. A knowledge gap that becomes an economic power gap.
OpenAI, meanwhile, races toward the super app model — one interface for everything, WeChat-style. If they succeed, millions of European users end up inside a closed ecosystem run by a US corporation, with no control or interoperability. Data, transactions, conversations — all in one silo.
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We see SMEs every day dependent on US cloud tools — Google Workspace, Shopify, Meta Ads — with no real alternatives. If an AI super app becomes the new gateway to the internet, whoever controls it controls distribution. Italy becomes a consumer market, not a tech producer.
Our position
We, at Meteora Web, are clear: transparency is not optional — it’s a market requirement. If Anthropic can look inside Claude, that ability should be accessible to European regulators and independent developers, not just the model owner. And super apps should be regulated as infrastructure, not mere services. Europe has GDPR and the Digital Markets Act, but lacks an offensive AI strategy: not just rules, but public investment in open models and sovereign infrastructure.
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We come from accounting and retail: we know what it means to depend on a single vendor for inventory or payments. Replacing it costs time and money. An AI super app would be the ultimate lock-in. That’s why we build on owned stacks (Laravel, Livewire) and recommend solutions clients can own, not rent forever. The same logic applies system-wide.
What to do
For those reading — entrepreneur, developer, policymaker — here’s a concrete action: start mapping your company’s tech dependencies. How many tools are US-based? How much data flows through them? When an integrated AI super app arrives, will you have an exit strategy or already be inside? Don’t wait for Brussels to decide for you: build an alternative today, even small. A database here, a payment module there. Digital sovereignty is built one plugin at a time.
