What can Seattle find out about Amazon from Luxembourg?
At first look, there aren’t many similarities between the Pacific Northwest tech hub and the small European nation, a monetary powerhouse tucked between France and Germany. However we share a number of issues in widespread: a powerful house sector, a style for world innovation — and the outsized presence of Amazon in our native economies.
That final one made Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden’s go to to Seattle this week particularly intriguing. Luxembourg is Amazon’s European headquarters, dwelling to greater than 4,250 workers, making the corporate the nation’s second-largest personal employer, and the fourth-largest general.
Amazon’s workforce in Luxembourg spans Operations, Shops, Gadgets, and Amazon Internet Providers, together with a lot of its European and worldwide leaders. Illustrating its deep financial footprint within the nation of 660,000 individuals, the tech big says it invested greater than €1.8 billion in Luxembourg in 2024 alone.
As a part of a broader interview with GeekWire throughout his present West Coast tech tour, the prime minister defined how the nation manages the connection with the tech big — describing Amazon as “an excellent company citizen,” and explaining that he views the corporate as a “strategic accomplice.”
His feedback stand in distinction to Amazon’s historical past in Seattle, the place elected leaders have typically wrestled with the impression of the corporate’s progress, and the place the tech big has at occasions threatened to gradual hiring or relocate operations in response to proposed rules.
“We think about Amazon virtually to be a Luxembourg firm,” Frieden stated. “They use all of the alternatives that we give to them, and that’s my recommendation for different nations, as nicely. We’re enterprise pleasant, we’re open, we’re secure, [and] we’re predictable.”
That business-friendly method isn’t new for Frieden. The 61-year-old prime minister, who was Luxembourg’s finance and justice minister earlier than spending a decade in personal authorized follow, returned to guide the nation in 2023 on a platform of sustaining Luxembourg’s competitiveness whereas strengthening its sovereignty.
Luxembourg is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, and a founding member of the European Union. It’s identified for a business-friendly tax setting that has attracted many worldwide firms — making it one of many wealthiest and most related nations in Europe.
Frieden’s journey was framed in Luxembourg media as a high-stakes working go to to “court docket main AI companies” in Seattle and the Bay Space. As reported by RTL Right now, the official function was to “strengthen financial, technological, and scientific partnerships” with a specific concentrate on synthetic intelligence.
As a part of his Pacific Northwest tour, Frieden visited firms together with Microsoft, Boeing, and Amazon and met with quite a lot of Seattle tech, enterprise, and enterprise capital leaders. His go to got here as companies within the Seattle space and Washington state grapple with a slate of latest state and native taxes, elevating long-term questions in regards to the area’s financial competitiveness.
GeekWire spoken with Frieden at a nook desk inside Redmond’s Woodblock restaurant, the place his motorcade prompted some passersby to ask if U.S. immigration forces had descended. Nope, simply the prime minister of one of many world’s friendliest nations.
An excessive amount of reliance on U.S. tech?
However we’re not the one ones curious in regards to the Amazon relationship. Frieden was additionally questioned about it throughout an Oct. 7 look earlier than the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Alex Agius Saliba, a Member of the European Parliament from Malta, requested in his public feedback how Frieden might reconcile Luxembourg’s objectives for digital sovereignty — guaranteeing crucial information and digital companies stay beneath nationwide or European management — with the truth that Amazon, a U.S. company, is such a giant employer and a key a part of its tech and financial infrastructure.
The prime minister didn’t get an opportunity to deal with the query throughout his European Parliament look, so we put it to him in our interview. He rejected the concept of a battle.
“No,” Frieden stated, “as a result of I believe digital sovereignty doesn’t imply that you just minimize your self off from the remainder of the world. It’s solely about having some management over your information, and that could be a reliable aim, I believe, for any authorities, for any area.”
Frieden, whose U.S. journey additionally features a go to to Silicon Valley, cited Luxembourg’s partnership with Google for example of how digital sovereignty could be maintained in collaboration with U.S. tech giants.
That initiative, referred to as Clarence, is a three way partnership between Luxembourg’s LuxConnect and Belgium’s Proximus that gives a sovereign cloud answer for delicate workloads whereas utilizing Google Cloud expertise. Luxembourg’s monetary regulator not too long ago adopted the platform to develop AI functions with full information sovereignty, and Google has additionally partnered with the College of Luxembourg on analysis initiatives.
AI regulation
Past cloud infrastructure, Frieden addressed one of the crucial urgent tech coverage challenges going through each Europe and the US: synthetic intelligence regulation.
On that entrance, he expressed concern in regards to the U.S. authorities’s fragmented method. Europe has its AI Act, whereas the U.S. has an rising patchwork of federal initiatives and state legal guidelines.
“It’s the improper method, as a result of AI is by nature world,” Frieden stated, arguing that Europe and the U.S. must get on the identical web page. “That’s the reason I imagine that we now have to work with the U.S. as Europeans to make it possible for the foundations are kind of aligned.”
Whereas he considers the EU’s AI Act a extra complete try to manage AI, Frieden is among the many European leaders pushing for simplification. “Like in lots of areas of European regulation, it’s a little bit too difficult,” he stated. “That’s why I’m amongst these heads of state and authorities who’ve requested the Fee to simplify the foundations.”
The AI increase
With tech firms pouring billions of {dollars} into AI infrastructure, we requested if Frieden is worried in regards to the danger of a worldwide AI bubble and its potential financial or environmental penalties.
Frieden stated he focuses on the optimistic facets and welcomes the investments. Whereas acknowledging that AI’s environmental impression must be managed, he drew a comparability to aviation — one other trade he engaged with throughout his go to to Boeing.
Simply because the aviation trade works to cut back emissions fairly than halting flights, he argued, AI’s uncomfortable side effects could be addressed whereas permitting the expertise to flourish.
He in contrast the present AI revolution to previous breakthroughs.
“Each few many years there’s a serious evolution in mankind, and that evolution at all times comes because of expertise,” he stated, citing electrical energy and the web as precedents. AI, he stated, “could have a big impact on the best way we reside collectively, we work collectively.”
The problem for political leaders is selecting whether or not to “help the worry of the individuals, or whether or not they encourage individuals to embrace technological change.” Frieden locations himself firmly within the latter camp: “Each technological innovation has introduced optimistic modifications to mankind.”
House exploration
The prime minister’s go to additionally highlighted one other Seattle-Luxembourg connection: house. Luxembourg has been a worldwide chief within the area for many years, constructing on its 40-year historical past as a satellite tv for pc hub for firms like SES and Intelsat.
The nation established the SpaceResources.lu initiative for house mining and not too long ago introduced “Venture Oasis,” a partnership with Kent-based Blue Origin — the business house enterprise based by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — to map lunar sources.
Frieden emphasised that Luxembourg’s house, science, and expertise initiatives are interconnected, not competing priorities. “We developed three methods: an AI technique, an information technique and a quantum technique,” he stated. “House is a part of a few of these methods as nicely.”
Luxembourg’s enchantment
One signal that Luxembourg’s method may be working? We’ve heard anecdotally that when U.S. tech staff — particularly from Amazon — are assigned to Luxembourg from Seattle or the Bay Space, they typically don’t need to return.
The prime minister attributed this to Luxembourg’s prime quality of life, together with its security, its various inhabitants — half the nation’s residents are international nationals — and its proximity to main European cities like Paris and Amsterdam.
“It’s a really peaceable nation,” Frieden stated, noting that this mixture of things makes Luxembourg notably engaging to worldwide tech staff.
