Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday projected that Europe’s artificial-intelligence (AI) computing capacity will increase by a factor of 10 over the next two years, with more than 20 so-called AI factories in the works.
“Europe has now awakened to the importance of these AI factories,” Huang said. Several of massive data centers will have more than a gigawatt of capacity, potentially ranking them among the largest in the world, he said during a company event jointly held with the VivaTech tech conference in Paris.
“The researchers, the start-ups, your AI shortage, your GPU shortage will be resolved for you soon,” he said. “It’s coming.”
Photo: Thibaud Moritz, AFP
Europe lags behind the US in developing the infrastructure for AI and hasn’t matched the spending committed by other regions. Huang said at an event in London on Monday with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer that a lack of infrastructure was holding back growth in a country that otherwise had the expertise and start-ups to be a global competitor in AI. His visits to London and Paris are part of a globe-trotting campaign to promote the adoption of AI and his company’s products.
While in Paris, Huang announced a raft of projects aimed at bolstering AI infrastructure across Europe. Nvidia is teaming up with Mistral AI to use local computing to run the startup’s services. “We’re going to build an AI cloud together,” Huang said.
An offering called Mistral Compute will tap 18,000 new Grace Blackwell chips from Nvidia. It will be developed in Mistral’s data center in Essonne, France, and the company plans to roll it out to other locations in Europe.
The chipmaker is trying to expand the market for AI accelerators — the processors used to develop and run AI models. Nvidia is pushing for countries to deploy technology on a national level and trying to make it easier for individual companies to get the benefits from AI.
In the UK, AI firms Nebius Group NV and Nscale Global Holdings Ltd will use thousands of such semiconductors for their own platforms. Other countries, including Italy and Armenia, are also installing new hardware, Nvidia said.
In Europe, Nvidia is working with 1.5 million developers and 9,600 businesses, as well as 7,000 start-ups in what the company calls its inception program.
“The only thing that’s missing is infrastructure” for Europe to keep pace in AI, Dion Harris, Nvidia’s director of data center and high-performance computing, said in a briefing ahead of the presentations. Nvidia is working with cloud and telecommunications companies across Europe, he said.
Huang also announced yesterday that Nvidia will be building what he called “the world’s first industrial AI cloud,” which would be used to design and simulate the construction of everything from wind tunnels to robots to cars. Nvidia said in a statement that the Germany-based project will feature 10,000 graphics processing units, as well as several of its systems and servers.
Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia has transformed its fortunes over the last three years and now earns almost as much revenue per quarter as Intel Corp, its longtime nemesis, does in a year.
About half of the company’s sales come from AI accelerator chips, which are used by many of the world’s biggest companies, including Microsoft Corp and Meta Platforms Inc, to develop AI software and services. Nvidia is looking to reach a wider market by promoting the use of smaller-scale systems by companies and countries.
Amazon.com Inc’s AWS, Mistral and others are joining Nvidia’s Lepton service, which helps connect AI developers with the computing hardware they need, the company said. It previously said cloud computing providers CoreWeave Inc and Softbank Group Corp used the service.
Nvidia said that European countries need help to get AI models deployed that are based on local languages and data. It’s providing software and services that will accelerate those efforts.
Separately, Nvidia said that vehicles using its chips and software are starting to appear on the road — the result of years of work. Mercedes-Benz Group AG’s CLA models and forthcoming vehicles from Volvo and Jaguar will rely on its Drive platform.
INVESTOR RESILIENCE? An analyst said that despite near-term pressures, foreign investors tend to view NT dollar strength as a positive signal for valuation multiples Morgan Stanley has flagged a potential 10 percent revenue decline for Taiwan’s tech hardware sector this year, as a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar begins to dent the earnings power of major exporters. In what appears to be the first such warning from a major foreign brokerage, the US investment bank said the currency’s strength — fueled by foreign capital inflows and expectations of US interest rate cuts — is compressing profit margins for manufacturers with heavy exposure to US dollar-denominated revenues. The local currency has surged about 10 percent against the greenback over the past quarter and yesterday breached
MARKET FACTORS: Navitas Semiconductor Inc said that Powerchip is to take over from TSMC as its supplier of high-voltage gallium nitride chips Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday in a statement said that it would phase out its compound semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) business over the next two years, citing market dynamics. The decision would not affect its financial targets announced previously, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker said. “We are working closely with our customers to ensure a smooth transition and remain committed to meeting their needs during this period,” it said. “Our focus continues to be on delivering sustained value to our partners and the market.” TSMC’s latest move came unexpectedly, as the chipmaker had said in its annual report that it has
Rick Cassidy, the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's (TSMC, 台積電) US subsidiary, TSMC Arizona Corp, plans to retire, but the company has yet to name a successor. After Cassidy made his intention to retire known, TSMC Arizona held a special general meeting and approved a resolution that Cassidy would not continue as chairman and would not remain as a director, TSMC said in a statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange last night. The meeting also approved a plan to appoint TSMC Arizona president Rose Castanares as a director, the company said, adding that Cassidy has been named as an advisor
SECURITY WARNING: The company possesses key 3-nanometer technology, and Taiwan should prevent it from being transferred to China, a lawmaker said The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it would conduct a “strict review” of any proposed acquisition of Taiwanese tech company Source Photonics Co (索爾思光電), following media reports that a Chinese firm was planning to buy the company in the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區). Local media reported that Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Co (東山精密), China’s largest printed circuit board manufacturer, had announced plans to acquire Source Photonics for 5.9 billion yuan (US$823.1 million). The ministry said it has not received an application from Source Photonics and has formally notified the company that any buyout would constitute a change in its ownership structure. The
RSS