On July 17, 2026, MIT Technology Review's The Download highlighted two stories: perimenopause misinformation and China's latest AI leap. Let's focus on the latter. According to verified sources, the new Moonshot-2 model from a Beijing-based research team has surpassed GPT-4o in logical reasoning and coding benchmarks, with a per-token cost 40% lower than the Western average. This isn't a one-off — it's the result of a decade-long, $50-billion-plus investment in chips, data, and talent. While Brussels debates the AI Act, Beijing is sprinting.
For Europe and Italy, the stakes are concrete. At Meteora Web, we work daily with SMEs that need affordable digital tools. If AI becomes a first-class service for those who can pay US or Chinese licenses — and a second-class one for those who lag — the gap widens. Today, a Sicilian farm could use AI to optimize crops, but if the only affordable model is closed-source and English-only, the barrier remains high. The risk is that Europe becomes a passive AI consumer, just as it did with operating systems and cloud.
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There's also the security angle. Italian SMEs often handle sensitive data — clients, suppliers, invoices — that would end up on Chinese or US servers without oversight. Our hands-on experience with accounting and ERP systems teaches us that data management is the core of a business. Outsourcing it to third parties without guarantees is a risk many underestimate.
We at Meteora Web see it clearly: screaming alarm isn't enough — action is needed.
Our position is firm: Europe must stop being just a regulator and become a builder. We don't need only laws; we need concrete funding for European chips, open datasets, and training. Italy, with its excellence in mechanics, fashion, and agrifood, has everything to build vertical AI for its own industries. But if research keeps getting cut and SME digital adoption isn't incentivized, Italy will remain a spectator. We see it every day: companies that could double revenue with custom software remain stuck on Excel because no one explains the ROI.
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So what to do? For developers: learn to integrate open-source models (Llama, Mistral) and contribute to European ecosystems. For SME owners: ask your consultants not just "how much does it cost?" but "where does my data end up?" And for policymakers: stop treating AI as a niche for specialists. It's a double-entry bookkeeping issue: what you invest today, you earn tomorrow. If Europe doesn't take risks, China and the US will win the game. And Italian SMEs will, once again, stay on the bench.
