It's not a misreading. Nvidia is worth 5.7 trillion dollars. That's more than the estimated GDP of Germany for 2026 - 5.45 trillion dollars. One company that makes chips for artificial intelligence, headquartered in California, now has a market value greater than the strongest economy in Europe.

For context - the United Kingdom has 4.26 trillion, France 3.6 trillion, Italy 2.74 trillion. That's all of Europe's G7 - every one of them with a GDP below Nvidia's market cap. And this is a company that wasn't even on most investors' map five years ago. It all happened with the AI explosion, with chips that ended up the only viable ones for training large models, and with the absence of any serious competitor.

An even sharper picture - the five biggest American tech companies (Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon) together are worth 20.81 trillion dollars. That's more than the combined GDP of the five biggest European economies - 18.14 trillion dollars. The whole of Europe - 700 million people, industry, military, public systems - has a smaller market capitalisation than five companies in Silicon Valley.

That's the picture of the 21st century, and it's not a comfortable one for European politicians. For the first time in modern history, continental power is defined not by territory, not by population, not by industrial output, but by ownership of specific technologies. Whoever has the chips - has the next twenty years. Whoever doesn't - has the negotiations.

Where is Europe on this map? ASML, the Dutch maker of the lithography machines for chips (without which Nvidia can't do what it does), is the 21st company in the world with 610.69 billion dollars. That's one-tenth of Nvidia. And it's the biggest European tech company. Everything else is below the radar.

For the Balkans, this isn't a piece of theatrical statistics. It's the reality of the digital world we live in - these five companies decide how every day of ours works. Search engine, mobile, AI assistant, products we buy online - everything runs through the infrastructure of five firms. If we want Macedonia to be something other than a user, we need to start looking at where our talent, our education and our strategy go. And right now - we aren't on that path.