Agree. This whole "EU is too fragmented/too risk averse" rhetoric in my opinion is insufficient to address why other advanced economies (Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan) also had regressions in the competitiveness of their tech sectors like Europe, and why US weaknesses don't seem to hold US businesses back.
In the end, it all boils down to whether you can get the $$$ to build at scale, and US businesses can get the most $$$ because US controls the world reserve currency (cf. Seigniorage). It's not surprising that the start of US outperformance correlates with the beginning of massive QE in 2008.
I'm from NZ. It's also risk averse, and a single economy and currency of 5 million people 2100km away from any other economy of note sounds a lot more 'fragmented' than anything in the EU.
Japan has a fairly sizeable 130m population. They used to have the world's most advanced tech industry in the 80s/part of the 90s.
Also do not discount Canada. At almost 40m people (comparable to say, Spain), access to US+Mexico market via NAFTA and a historically strong tech sector (Ati, Blackberry etc) you'd expect them to be very strong. However, despite these strengths, today Canada's tech sector pretty much devolved to a nearby location for US companies to temporarily relocate employees that had H1B issues. Canadian-origin tech companies are now basically gone from the big leagues.
In the end, it all boils down to whether you can get the $$$ to build at scale, and US businesses can get the most $$$ because US controls the world reserve currency (cf. Seigniorage). It's not surprising that the start of US outperformance correlates with the beginning of massive QE in 2008.