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Axios C-Suite: Europe's $2B AI upstart says OpenAI, Anthropic are lying about safety

Jim VandeHei

Illustration of a computer mouse surrounded by traffic cones — Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Uljan Sharka, founder and CEO of Domyn, the company the EU picked to build Europe's open-source frontier model, popped into my office and dropped a helluva accusation: OpenAI and Anthropic are purposely lying about safety concerns.

"This is a big lie that is driving an unreasonable conversation."
Asked if he was comfortable seeing the word "lying" in print, he said: "It's the truth for me. ... I'm ready."

His case: The tech has plateaued. The scary behavior is trained by labs faking "autonomous" agents. The doom talk is designed to merely prop up valuations ahead of IPOs — and manufacture a delay to buy time so they can build AI that actually matches their hype.

Who the hell is Uljan? He runs the hottest open-source company in Europe, recently valued at $2B. To be clear, he's pitching a product that competes with the U.S. AI giants: sovereign, data-secure AI systems individual companies fully own and control.

His proof: He claims AI thinking-on-its-own capabilities are broadly overhyped, based on his years of work building these systems. He said they're nothing more than "digital books" of data that do what you tell them to.

Anthropic and OpenAI insist their fears are real and driven by private testing and models that Uljan has never seen.

The most clear-eyed critique of AI hysteria: Nvidia's Jensen Huang (optimist) vs. the NYT's Ezra Klein (skeptic), worth a full listen.

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Axios C-Suite: Europe's $2B AI upstart says OpenAI, Anthropic are lying about safety

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