The chip designer pledged to build 20 AI factories on the continent, including a German facility in the works to be equipped with 10,000 GPUs
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.
