About: My latest article on LinkedIn, links stripped. 👇 The companies taking AI seriously are making decisions that extend well beyond which chatbot their employees should use. They are investing in computing capacity, connecting models to operational systems and investigating how much valuable work can be performed under their own control. AI is becoming a capability to develop and manage alongside engineering, production and research. Finland’s data centre boom makes the physical scale of that shift difficult to ignore. Google has announced plans to invest at least €13 billion in Finnish digital infrastructure during 2027 and 2028, including projects and supporting infrastructure in Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala. In Salo, atNorth has announced a proposed campus representing approximately €2 billion in investment, excluding servers owned by customers and their installation. These are planned investments at different stages of development, rather than facilities already operating at their proposed capacity. Nevertheless, they give us a concrete view of the commitment being made. For Finnish businesses, the opportunity reaches beyond construction contracts, electricity supply and heat recovery. Those activities matter, but there is another question worth asking: what will our companies learn to do with the computing capability being built around them? A data centre does not automatically create an intelligent business. That requires a different kind of investment, and company leadership cannot leave it entirely to infrastructure providers. 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 The idea that Finnish businesses are dormant on AI is not supported by the figures. Statistics Finland reported that 38% of surveyed enterprises used AI technologies in spring 2025, an increase of 14 percentage points in one year. Among companies employing at least 100 people, adoption reached 68%. Meanwhile, 15% of all surveyed enterprises had documented instructions, practices or procedures concerning AI use. These measure different things: using the technology and establishing documented ways of managing it.

"I'll just figure it out myself." I hear this constantly. Someone picks up Claude or an automation tool and swears they're gonna learn it on their own. Almost nobody does. What actually happens is they try for a week, hit the same wall over and over, get frustrated, and either quit or come back asking for help anyway. And honestly, I don't think saying "I'll do it myself" is even about doing it yourself, it's the thing people say to feel okay about not spending money. So if you've been stalling on some AI project telling yourself you'll get to it, that's not a character flaw, most people just need someone sitting in it with them to actually move. Needing help to finish an AI project isn't quitting.

You can create AI illustrations, posters and video avatars on your own computer - without monthly AI subscriptions. That’s how I generated this video, with a mere 8Gb of VRAM. If you run an agency, this isn’t just about saving a few euros on software. It’s about how much of every project fee you actually keep. Local AI isn’t flawless today. Some results need refining. Others go straight in the bin. The value is in that you can try again. Change direction. Explore another idea. Without watching a paid credit balance disappear. Today, the value isn’t in flawless execution. It’s in the freedom to keep iterating. Tomorrow? Both. Learn the technology today. Master it tomorrow. Want to learn how to put local AI to practical use? Comment below and follow me for more.

It's been a while since I posted here anything. I generated my first local AI video and thought I could share it here. Create AI images, talking avatars and videos on your own computer - without monthly AI generation subscriptions. This short showcase features locally generated illustrations, posters with readable text, lip-synced avatars and a portrait brought to life. I’m Victor A. Lausas, founder of NORAI Academy. The examples in the video were generated on my home desktop with a mere 8Gb of VRAM. Want to learn how to build your own local AI creative workflow? Comment below and follow, subs etc for upcoming videos. Video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9caaP9pqNU

If you believe the headlines, European AI and Europe are on the brink of an AI breakthrough. Every week, there’s another press release about a “European champion” – Mistral AI in France, Aleph Alpha in Germany, Silo AI in Finland, the latest pan-European initiative. Add in German Telekom partnering with NVIDIA, Norwegian OpenAI infrastructure build, and it all looks like we are catching up with the US giants. But the European boardroom question looms large: Are we really building independent, sovereign and SECURE European AI, or just rebranding imported technology and feeding our company secrets to intelligence services and calling it progress? Let’s cut through the marketing, the regulatory fanfare, and the unicorn hype to get to the facts that actually matter for Europe’s future. 𝔼𝕦𝕣𝕠𝕡𝕖'𝕤 "ℕ𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕡𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕤" - 𝕆𝕣 ℕ𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝 ℍ𝕠𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕘𝕖𝕤? Let’s start with the reality behind the leading names: - Mistral AI (France): The poster child for French AI innovation, with strong government backing and big funding rounds. - Aleph Alpha (Germany): Promoted as the German alternative to OpenAI, focused on explainable, enterprise-ready LLMs. - Silo AI (Finland): Now positioning itself as Europe’s largest private AI lab, recently going all-in with AMD for its compute stack. - German Telekom + NVIDIA: Germany’s “sovereign” AI cloud partnership, meant to offer European businesses an alternative to the US Big Tech clouds. On the surface, these all sound pretty good, and they sound like real progress. But a closer look exposes a much more complicated, and, for the cautious board member, a worrying landscape. 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕀𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕒𝕨 ℙ𝕣𝕠𝕓𝕝𝕖𝕞: 𝕎𝕙𝕠 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝕆𝕨𝕟𝕤 "𝕊𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕚𝕘𝕟𝕥𝕪"? Few outside the deep compliance and infosec world are talking openly about this: Any European AI company headquartered in France or Germany is directly subject to local intelligence and surveillance laws. - In France, the Intelligence Act (“Loi Renseignement”) gives state agencies sweeping powers to require data access from local tech companies, even in the name of “national security” (see itnews). - In Germany, the new Federal Intelligence Service Act (BND law, as amended in 2022) also mandates cooperation and data sharing with the intelligence agencies when required, allowing state trojans and telephone hacking, among other “perks”, completely without cause (see freiheitsrechte).