CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at the annual VivaTech conference in Paris on Wednesday, said the company was building the world’s first “industrial artificial intelligence cloud” for European manufacturers. The Germany-based facility, a key part of the AI factory initiative, is set to be equipped with 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), helping European firms such as carmaker BMW Group accelerate manufacturing applications – from design and engineering to robotics – according to Nvidia. An AI factory is the company’s term for a specialised data centre.
“Europe has now awakened to the importance of AI factories and AI infrastructure, and I’m so delighted to see so much activity here,” Huang said at the event. Nvidia planned to boost AI computing capacity in Europe tenfold over the next two years to help local researchers and start-ups address GPU shortages, he added.
The company also announced a partnership with French AI champion Mistral AI to create a cloud platform powered by 18,000 of its latest chips, enabling European businesses to develop AI based on Mistral’s models. The companies plan to expand the project to multiple sites by next year.
The moves underscore Nvidia’s efforts to capture new growth in Europe as it faces mounting challenges in China. The company has been hit by sweeping US export restrictions, most recently expanded in April to include the H20 chip it designed specifically for China.
Nvidia said it expected the restrictions to cost it US$8 billion in revenue in its second quarter, which ends in July, after taking a US$4.5 billion charge in the previous quarter for excess inventory and purchase obligations tied to the H20.
