From Le Monde, June 11:
The 2025 edition of the Vivatech trade fair opened in the French capital on Wednesday, June 11, with a speech from Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and French President Emmanuel Macron expected to attend.
Drawing high-powered tech CEOs and a presidential visit, the Vivatech trade fair opened in Paris on Wednesday, June 11, with a center-stage role for AI dogged by transatlantic trade tensions.
People from around the globe thronged out of packed metro trains into a southern Paris convention center, crammed with stands in blaring colors showing off the latest innovations from startups, tech giants and more traditional firms. The top attraction on the opening day of one of Europe's largest tech fairs will be Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, looking to make a mark in Europe for the company that builds the most computing hardware for artificial intelligence.
Vivatech regular President Emmanuel Macron will also attend, with a walking tour and chats with French tech startups on the agenda. Tech watchers expect more products than ever embedding AI into everyday life to be touted in the exhibition halls over the show's four days.
Around 14,000 startups and more than 3,000 investors were expected in Paris, while organizers forecast total visitor numbers to at least equal last year's 165,000 people.
Nvidia headlining
Nvidia's Huang – sporting his trademark leather jacket – has top billing with an opening presentation slated to last more than an hour....
....MUCH MORE
And from CNBC via NBC4, New York, June 11:
Nvidia makes big play for Europe with infrastructure deals
- Nvidia announced a slew of partnerships with European firms on Wednesday spanning infrastructure to software.
- Nvidia is looking to unlock new markets and keep itself at the center of the global artificial intelligence story.
- Chief executive Jensen Huang on Wednesday continued his tour of Europe with a keynote at Nvidia's GTC event in Paris, France.
Nvidia on Wednesday announced a slew of partnerships with European countries and companies spanning infrastructure to software as it looks to keep itself at the center of the global artificial intelligence story.
Chief Executive Jensen Huang on Wednesday continued his tour of Europe with a keynote at Nvidia's GTC event in Paris, France, where he laid out some key European partnerships.
Nvidia has been keen to position itself as an infrastructure company that can help countries and governments build data centers using its graphics processing units to unlock the potential of AI for local economies and populations. As part of that effort, Huang recently carried out a similar whirlwind trip to the Middle East, where Nvidia is planning to sell its latest chips as part of big data center buildouts in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
"Every industrial revolution begins with infrastructure. AI is the essential infrastructure of our time, just as electricity and the internet once were," Huang said in a Wednesday press release.
"Europe has now awakened to the importance of these AI factories, the importance of this AI infrastructure," Huang said during a separate presentation on Wednesday. AI factories is the term Nvidia uses for massive data centers containing its GPUs.
Huang added that AI computing capacity in Europe will grow by a factor of 10 in the next two years....
....The big focus from Nvidia in Europe is around so-called "sovereign AI," the idea that data centers and servers that are providing services to users in the European Union, are actually located regionally rather than abroad....
....MUCH MORE
Mr. Huang told us what he was going to tell us back in December 2023:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says AI to See ‘Major Second Wave (NVDA)
AI to See ‘Major Second Wave,’ NVIDIA CEO Says in Fireside Chat With iliad Group Exec
NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang says sovereign AI a growing need for countries to reflect unique cultural, linguistic, industrial characteristics
European startups will get a massive boost from a new generation of AI infrastructure, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said Friday in a fireside chat with iliad Group Deputy CEO Aude Durand — and it’s coming just in time.
And February and March 2024:
Here's Nvidia's "Sovereign AI" Pitch (NVDA)
which led to some unfortunate neurological confusion:
This is terrible. I now have Jensen Huang speaking in Dr. Martin Luther King's cadences as he repurposes the penultimate paragraph of "I have a Dream":
Let AI ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let AI ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let AI ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let AI ring.I may have to go lie down.
March 2024 -...Every, town, every village, every hamlet, every wide spot in the road, should have their own (NVDA-powered) supercomputer.
And later that year:
June 16, 2024
France's "Mistral AI warns of lack of data centres and training capacity in Europe"October 4, 2024
"Parlez-vous AI? Francophone scholars warn against English language dominating AI"
And this year:
"Jensen Huang Wants to Make AI the New World Infrastructure" (NVDA)
This sovereign AI you speak of, I have heard of it.
I have heard wondrous tales of immense wealth,
Of amazing deeds performed as if by magic.
Yes I have heard of all of this...*
