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By Supantha Mukherjee and Florence Loeve
PARIS (Reuters) -Nvidia will build its first artificial intelligence cloud platform for industrial applications in Germany, CEO Jensen Huang said at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Wednesday.
The technology, which will combine AI with robotics, will help carmakers such as BMW (ETR:BMWG) and Mercedes-Benz (OTC:MBGAF) with processes from simulating product design to managing logistics.
In a series of Europe-focused announcements, Huang outlined plans to expand technology centres in seven countries, open up Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s compute marketplace for European companies, help AI model makers in several languages to become more advanced and aid in drug discovery by the likes of Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO).
"In just two years, we will increase the amount of AI computing capacity in Europe by a factor of 10," Huang said in a nearly two-hour-long presentation in front of a packed audience.
"Europe has now awakened to the importance of AI factories and the importance of the AI infrastructure," he said, laying out plans for 20 AI factories - large-scale infrastructure designed for developing, training and deploying AI models - in Europe.
Huang will be travelling to Berlin on Friday, said two people close to the matter, with one of the sources saying he is due to meet German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Nvidia did not specify where it would build the plant, at what cost or when construction would start. A German location, however, would be an early win for Merz’s new ruling coalition after Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Wolfspeed (NYSE:WOLF) last year suspended plans to build local factories.
While Europe has lagged behind the U.S. and China in developing AI technologies, the European Commission said in March that it planned to invest $20 billion to construct four AI factories.
Nvidia is also partnering European AI champion Mistral to create AI computing that runs on 18,000 of the latest Nvidia chips for European businesses.
"Sovereign AI is an imperative - no company, industry or nation can outsource its intelligence," Huang said.
Huang has been travelling the globe to highlight the importance of businesses adopting AI and the dangers of falling behind.
On Monday he said in London that Britain lacked the computing infrastructure to deliver the full potential of its AI research base.
Beyond AI, Huang reiterated his view that quantum computing technology is at an inflection point.
Quantum calculations could crack problems that would demand years of processing from Nvidia’s most advanced AI systems.
Quantum computing will solve "some interesting problems" in the coming years, Huang added.
The CEO made similar comments in March at Nvidia’s annual software developer conference, when he spoke about the potential of quantum computing, walking back comments he made in January when he said useful quantum computers were 20 years away.