ROME (Reuters) - The enormous power supply required by data centres to support artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will create competitive issues among countries and put Europe at a disadvantage, the CEO of BlackRock said on Friday.

"It will be a giant issue for Europe," Larry Fink told a business conference in Rome.

The head of the world's largest asset manager said the data centres would gravitate towards areas where power is cheaper and government subsidies would likely be necessary where it is more expensive.

Fink, speaking by video link, said "trillions of dollars" would be needed to build AI data centres, and he was in conversations with several government about their capital needs connected with sourcing the power supply required.