The apparent race between OpenAI and Anthropic for stock market listings that could value each at more than $1 trillion is just the latest episode in the two companies’ dash for cash to fund their AI ambitions. Only in May Anthropic raised $65 billion, which came on top of a $30 billion fund raising in February, while in March OpenAI announced it had secured funding of $122 billion.

But examples from eastern Europe suggest that it is perfectly possible to become a global technology company without access to Silicon Valley capital. One of the best known is Bitdefender, a cybersecurity company that grew out of a software business founded by Florin Talpes and his wife Mariuca shortly after the fall of communism in Romania. Although it is now a global entity with a headquarters in Bucharest and a key security operations center in San Antonio, Texas, it bootstrapped its way through its early years. READ MORE