Europe Warms to Jensen Huang’s Sovereign AI Vision

For over a year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has tirelessly promoted the idea of “sovereign AI” — a concept rooted in the belief that every nation must build and control its own artificial intelligence systems to preserve its cultural, linguistic, and historical identity in the digital age. While his pitch initially faced polite nods, it’s now finding serious traction in Europe, a region increasingly uncomfortable with its dependence on U.S. tech giants.

Last week, Huang made a high-profile tour of Europe’s power centers — London, Paris, and Berlin — announcing new partnerships, projects, and AI infrastructure investments, while sounding the alarm over Europe’s lagging AI capabilities. In a world where geopolitical tensions and tech rivalries are sharpening, his message landed at just the right moment.

“We are going to invest billions here,” Huang declared in Paris, “but Europe needs to move into AI quickly.”

His call comes at a time when European leaders are growing wary of ceding control over critical digital infrastructure to companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. And after recent clashes between European policymakers and the Trump administration, the political appetite for homegrown tech sovereignty has never been stronger.

Europe’s AI Sovereignty Push Accelerates

Huang’s timing couldn’t be better. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer opened the week by announcing £1 billion ($1.35 billion) in funding to rapidly expand the U.K.’s computing capacity. He framed it as part of a global race “to be an AI maker and not an AI taker.”

Over in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron took the stage at the VivaTech conference, one of the world’s premier tech gatherings, to echo those sentiments. “This is our fight for sovereignty,” Macron declared, positioning AI infrastructure as a cornerstone of national resilience.

The momentum carried over to Berlin, where Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom revealed plans to build a major AI cloud platform in Germany. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz used the occasion to underscore the importance of digital sovereignty for Europe’s economic future.

Europe has long trailed behind the U.S. and China in cloud infrastructure and AI innovation. Its largest cloud platforms remain dominated by American firms, while the AI startup scene is only now beginning to produce notable players like Mistral, the buzzy French company led by 31-year-old Arthur Mensch. “There’s no reason why Europe shouldn’t have tech champions,” Mensch argued, seated next to Huang at VivaTech. “This is a gigantic dream.”

AI Gigafactories and Power Hurdles

The European Union itself is getting involved. In February, the bloc announced plans to build four AI “gigafactories” at a cost of $20 billion, aiming to reduce reliance on U.S. firms for AI infrastructure. An EU official confirmed that Nvidia has been in direct contact with the European Commission, offering to allocate some of its chip production for these factories.

Those chips — Nvidia’s state-of-the-art Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) — are indispensable for AI data centers across the world, from Silicon Valley to Tokyo to the Middle East. In Europe, a stronger push for sovereign AI could transform the market, giving local cloud providers, startups, and chipmakers a long-awaited boost.

But the path forward won’t be easy. High electricity costs and soaring energy demand pose serious challenges for AI data centers, which already consume about 3% of the EU’s total electricity. That figure is projected to rise sharply by the end of the decade as AI applications proliferate.

Mistral, which has raised just over $1 billion to date, is betting big on its Nvidia partnership to carve out a role as a European AI heavyweight. Its upcoming data center will initially house 18,000 Nvidia AI chips, with further expansion planned across multiple sites by 2026.

“Hyperscalers are spending $10 to $15 billion per quarter on infrastructure,” warned Pascal Brier, chief innovation officer at Capgemini, a partner of both Nvidia and Mistral. “Who in Europe can afford that exactly?” While acknowledging the funding gap, Brier argued that Europe must act now or risk falling further behind.

A Future of ‘Mistral and the Rest’

Mistral has already released several AI models used by European businesses, but most companies still blend its models with those from U.S. giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Platforms. As Brier put it, “Most of the time it’s not Mistral or the rest, it’s Mistral and the rest.”

That reality highlights a central tension in Europe’s AI sovereignty ambitions: even as it strives for independence, it will likely remain intertwined with the very companies it hopes to compete against — including Nvidia itself.