This US administration (or any admin) would almost certainly impose export controls on US AI technology before it would allow one of the frontier model providers to be acquired/relocate outside the US. It did the same thing when ASML wanted to acquire Cymer (California company that provides the EUV light source technology). The acquisition was only allowed under strict technology sharing/export agreements with the Dutch government.
Europe really just needs to rally behind Mistral. That's where they should dump their cash.
Can they actually prevent it though? In typical cases there would be IP licenses involved. But in this case it's a valuation based (AFAICT) on a team of people plus their infra. What happens if they all just happened to get hired by "AnthropicEU GmbH" a new entity which has been gifted hundreds of millions in computing resources?
Fair deal for the employees but hard to compete against smart, well resourced people who are working 996. Everything with AI is moving so fast that moving slower makes you irrelevant.
But can they restrict the researchers from leaving?
What if they are just offered regular jobs by a new European company?
What the US has done is dictatorial, but this would be even worse if they try to do it.
Europe really just needs to rally behind Mistral. That's where they should dump their cash.