Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been pitching the idea of ”sovereign AI” since 2023. Europe is now beginning to listen and act.
This concept is based on the idea that each region has a different language, knowledge, history and culture, and that every country needs to develop and own AI.
Last week, the CEO of an artificial intelligence chip maker toured Europe's major capitals, London, Paris and Berlin.
His vision began to gain traction after leaders were increasingly wary of reliance on a few tech companies on the continent, and after venting rage from US President Donald Trump.
“We're going to invest billions here…but Europe needs to move to AI soon,” fans said in Paris on Wednesday.
Last Monday, British Prime Minister Kiel Starmer announced £1 billion (US$1.35 billion) of funds to expand computing power “to become an AI maker and not an AI taker.”
French President Emmanuel Macron called the Building AI Infrastructure “a battle for our sovereignty” at Vivatech, one of the largest global technology conferences.
After Nvidia planned to build an AI cloud platform in Germany with Deutsche Telekom, German Prime Minister Friedrich Merz called it a “critical step” for the digital sovereignty and economic future of Europe's top economy.
Cloud infrastructure is primarily run by Google from Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, so it lags behind both the US and China, with only a few smaller AI companies where AI companies like Mistral rival the US.
“There's no reason why Europe shouldn't have a high-tech champion,” said 31-year-old Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, sitting beside Huang, who has led Nvidia for over 30 years on a Vivatec panel.
“This is a huge dream.”
Gig Factory Plans have been unlocked
In France, Mistral partnered with NVIDIA to build a data center to promote the AI needs of European companies with their country's alternatives.
With plans to expand multiple sites in 2026, the first phase will use 18,000 of the latest NVIDIA AI chips.
In February, the European Union announced plans to build four “AI Gigafactories” at a cost of $20 billion to reduce dependence on US companies.
The European Commission has been in touch with Huang, and he told EU officials that he intends to allocate chip production to those factories to Europe, EU officials told Reuters.
Nvidia's chips, known as graphics processing units or GPUs, are important for building AI data centers from the US to Japan, India and the Middle East.
In Europe, the promotion of sovereign AI allows domestic cloud providers, AI startups and shipmakers to reconstruct the technology landscape as they stand to win new government funding and a move to data infrastructure within the region.
Nvidia also wants to solidify demand for AI chips, ensuring that countries are hoping to independence, but they rely on the technology to get there.
Power Cost
Pushing is not without challenges.
High power costs and increased demand can strain data center power. Data centres account for 3% of the EU's electricity demand, but consumption over the past decade is expected to increase rapidly due to AI.
Mistral has raised just $1 billion and is about to become a European homemade champion with some of the money US hyperscalers or large data center operators spend in a month.
“Hyperscaler spends between $10 billion and $15 billion per quarter on infrastructure. Who can afford that exactly?” said Pascal Brier, chief innovation officer at Capgemini, a partner of both Nvidia and Mistral.
“That doesn't mean there's nothing to be done, but you have to be aware of the fact that there is always a gap.”
Mistral has launched several AI models used by companies, but companies tend to mix with other companies' models such as Openai, Humanity, and Metaplatforms.
“In most cases, it's not a mistral or a residual. It's a mistral, it's a residue,” Brier said.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Paris; Additional reporting by Foo Yun Chee in Brussels, edited by Josephine Mason and Matthew Lewis)
