Blitz Bureau
Nvidia will build its first artificial intelligence cloud platform for industrial applications in Germany, CEO Jensen Huang said last week at the VivaTech conference in Paris.
The technology, which will combine AI with robotics, will help carmakers such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz 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’s compute marketplace for European companies, help AI model makers in several languages become more advanced, and aid in drug discovery by firms such as Novo Nordisk.
“In just two years, we will increase the amount of AI computing capacity in Europe by a factor of 10,” said Huang, 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.
While Europe has lagged the US and China in developing AI technologies, the European Commission said in March it planned to invest $20 billion to construct four AI factories.
Nvidia is also partnering with 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 trotting the globe to highlight the importance of businesses adopting AI and the dangers of falling behind.
While in London, he said 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 currently 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.