CEO Jensen Huang announced several AI infrastructure partnerships throughout Europe at GTC Paris on Wednesday
Nvidia Corp. is following up on its sovereign artificial-intelligence deals in the Middle East with more such pacts throughout Europe as it faces uncertainty in China.
The company
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announced new partnerships with several European cloud, telecommunications and technology leaders at its GTC Paris event in France on Wednesday. Among them is a partnership with French AI startup Mistral to build a cloud platform powered by 18,000 of its Blackwell chips that firms across Europe can use to develop and deploy AI. In Germany, Nvidia is building what it says is the first industrial AI cloud in the world for European manufacturing companies. The AI factory, or data center, will be powered by 10,000 Blackwell chips, Nvidia said.
“Every industrial revolution begins with infrastructure,” Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in a statement. “AI is the essential infrastructure of our time, just as electricity and the internet once were.”
The chip manufacturer also announced a partnership with the Armenian government to deploy thousands of its Blackwell graphics processing units in the region, and a collaboration with the Italian government to build on its sovereign AI capabilities. Major telecommunications companies, including Orange
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and Telefónica
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, will develop infrastructure for the continent with Nvidia for sovereign AI, the company said.
Additionally, the company is expanding technology centers throughout Europe in countries such as Spain and Finland to nurture AI-focused enterprises and startups in the region.
Nvidia’s push in Europe comes after deals in the Gulf states, and amid the potential loss of business in China. In May, Nvidia said it is deploying 18,000 chips with Saudi Arabian AI firm Humain over the next five years for a data center that is expected to reach 500 megawatts.
See more: Nvidia is back in the $3 trillion-market-cap club as the U.S. weighs Saudi chip deal
After the company’s specially designed H20 chips were banned for sale in China by the Trump administration in April, Huang said he expected the country’s AI market to grow to $50 billion in the next few years — a “tremendous loss” for U.S. companies missing out on that business. During its first-quarter earnings call in May, Nvidia said it will see an $8 billion loss in China revenue for the current quarter due to the ban.
One analyst said Huang’s fears over losing its China business is “not long-term enough.” Richard Windsor, founder of research firm Radio Free Mobile, said in a note in May that, while Nvidia and its chip peers in the West stand to lose to local chip firms in China, the companies will pursue growing market share elsewhere — with a longer wait for returns.
“Even though [Huang] is famed for thinking way ahead of everyone else, this time he is too short-term-focused, as what U.S. and Western companies lose in China, I think they will get back elsewhere in time,” Windsor said.
Read on: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang fears losing the Chinese market. One analyst says that’s short-term thinking.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-is-going-all-in-on-sovereign-ai-can-that-help-its-china-problem-35e49ac2
