Nvidia plans to announce $2 billion in new European investments within the next week, chief executive Jensen Huang said, as the U.S. chipmaker expands its backing for the region’s artificial intelligence industry.
Speaking at an event in Paris on Oct. 13 at the start of a tour that also includes London and Berlin, Huang said the planned deals would add to the $8 billion Nvidia invested in Europe over the past year.
He also announced new funding for four French startups: Doctolib, Genesis AI, Pigment and Entalpic.
Doctolib develops digital healthcare services, while Genesis AI focuses on robotics. Pigment provides AI-powered business planning software, and Entalpic uses AI to develop advanced materials, Nvidia said.
Huang has pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in investments worldwide to promote the use of AI and Nvidia’s products.
“Europe needs to get in the race,” he said, arguing that AI could drive economic growth and be developed safely.
He rejected calls to slow the technology’s development as concerns grow over AI systems operating beyond human control and the environmental impact of energy-intensive data centers.
European governments have sought a role in developing international safeguards against the technology’s potential risks.
Huang said open-source models could help Europe narrow the gap with advanced AI technologies in the United States. Such models can be cheaper to use and more easily adapted to different languages and local needs, he said.
Nvidia has invested in Mistral AI, the French developer of open-source models, and supplies AI chips for the company’s data centers.
