The EU's AI Act enforcement calendar may be rewritten by tomorrow. Trilogue negotiators from the Commission, Council, and Parliament are expected to reach a political agreement on the Digital Omnibus on AI as early as 28 April (tomorrow), with formal adoption targeted for July. The deal would push the compliance deadline for standalone high-risk AI systems to December 2027 and for AI embedded in regulated products to August 2028, giving industry a further 16–24 months beyond the original August 2026 date. What businesses do with that time is another question.
Policy & Regulation
AI Omnibus: deadline extension nears finalisation. The Council agreed its position on 13 March and the Parliament adopted its negotiating mandate in the same month. Both institutions have converged on fixed postponement dates; the remaining divergence concerns the Parliament's push to narrow the definition of what qualifies as high-risk. A political agreement must be reached before June to prevent a compliance cliff when original rules take force on 2 August. (Ropes & Gray)
DMA: Google put on notice over search data; mid-tier platforms face new VLOP obligations. On 16 April, the Commission proposed measures requiring Google to share search engine data with third parties under the Digital Markets Act; the move could structurally alter the economics of search competition in Europe. Separately, the Commission refined its methodology for counting "active recipients of the service," pulling several mid-tier social platforms past the 45-million-user VLOP threshold. Those platforms now have six months to comply with Very Large Online Platform obligations. (Digital Watch Observatory)
EU awards €180M sovereign cloud tender. On 20 April, the Commission awarded a six-year, €180 million cloud services contract to four provider groups: Post Telecom with CleverCloud and OVHcloud, STACKIT, Scaleway, and Proximus with S3NS, Clarence, and Mistral. The contract covers sensitive data for EU institutions and agencies; it also previews the infrastructure logic the forthcoming Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) would make binding. European hyperscaler challengers won; US hyperscalers did not. (Help Net Security)
Franco-German AI Dialogue submitted to both governments. On 17 April, the joint industry dialogue, covering more than 100 stakeholders across manufacturing, energy, healthcare, agrifood, media, and telecoms, submitted its final report to French and German authorities. It identifies seven strategic action areas and calls for streamlined regulation, expanded compute capacity, and sustained investment in AI infrastructure. The report will feed directly into the IPCEI AI project at EU level. (Fraunhofer)
Commission updates Technology Transfer rules with first-ever data licensing guidance. On 16 April, the Commission adopted a revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and accompanying Guidelines, the first update since 2014. For the first time, the Guidelines include a dedicated section on data licensing, clarifying that licensed data can qualify as a "technology right" under the TTBER framework. The clarification matters for any deal structured around proprietary datasets: training data, sensor feeds, genomics. Anywhere data itself is the licensed asset. (Bird & Bird)
Capital & Investment
AI claims more than half of European venture funding for the first time. Q1 2026 European venture reached $17.6 billion, up 30% year-on-year and the second consecutive quarter of growth. AI startups took more than $9.2 billion of it, topping 50% for the first time. The four largest rounds all went to AI companies: Nscale (data centres), Wayve (autonomous driving), Advanced Machine Intelligence (physical AI), and Legora (legal AI), each raising over $500 million. The caveat is sharp: deal volume fell 40% year-on-year, with seed-stage activity down 44%, suggesting capital is concentrating into fewer, later-stage bets rather than seeding the next generation. (Crunchbase)
Jeito Capital closes record €1 billion biopharma fund. Paris-based Jeito Capital closed its second fund at €1 billion on 8 April, claiming the largest raise ever by a fully independent European biopharma fund. Jeito II will back 15–20 clinical-stage companies at up to €150 million each, focused on oncology, obesity, and autoimmune conditions. The close triples Jeito's AuM to €1.6 billion. Total global biotech VC in Q1 2026 dropped to $3.2 billion; Jeito's raise runs against the headwind. (BioPharma Dive)
EIC selects 70 deep tech startups for Pre-Accelerator grants. On 23 April, the European Innovation Council selected 70 early-stage companies from lower-innovation-capacity EU member states to receive up to €500,000 each under the EIC Pre-Accelerator, €32.5 million in total. The selection is part of the EIC's 2026 programme, which makes €1.4 billion available across Accelerator, Pathfinder, and Transition tracks. (European Innovation Council)
Talent & Workforce
Visa Europe gets a new CEO. Antony Cahill has been appointed Regional President and CEO of Visa's European operations, replacing Charlotte Hogg who has resigned. He inherits a brief that includes navigating DMA and DSA obligations on payments infrastructure; a sensitive moment to be new in a Brussels-facing role. (CIO Dive)
One to Watch
The Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) is expected to be formally proposed by the Commission in the coming weeks. The sovereign cloud tender awarded on 20 April previews the infrastructure logic the legislation would enshrine: EU-based providers for sensitive public-sector data, with binding rather than preferential requirements. If enacted, CADA would force hyperscalers to localise specific workloads and give EU-domiciled providers a structural advantage in institutional contracts. Industry groups are already lobbying hard on the definition of "European" cloud. The tech sovereignty debate embedded in CADA could prove more commercially consequential for US platforms than AI Act compliance itself. (EU Cloud and AI Development Act tracker)