NVIDIA has laid the foundations for a comprehensive strategy to establish Europe as a global leader in artificial intelligence, unveiling plans for massive infrastructure investments across the continent during its time at VivaTech in Paris last week.
The American chip giant is partnering with European governments and technology leaders to deploy more than 3,000 exaflops of NVIDIA Blackwell computing power, representing one of the largest sovereign AI infrastructure commitments in the region’s history.
Alongside showcasing NVIDIA’s arsenal of AI hardware, including the NVIDIA DGX B200 and NVIDIA RTX PRO systems in Paris, NVIDIA revealed extensive plans for their deployment across Europe.
Huang’s series of high-profile, glitzy keynotes and interviews with state leaders underscored NVIDIA’s recognition of the market potential for their chips in Europe, and NVIDIA’s founder is wasting no time in ensuring his company is at the forefront of any expansion in the region’s AI infrastructure.
National Partnerships Drive Digital Sovereignty
France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom are set to spearhead domestic AI development through strategic partnerships with technology providers including Domyn, Mistral AI, Nebius, and Nscale. These collaborations aim to strengthen digital sovereignty whilst supporting economic growth across the continent.
“Every industrial revolution begins with infrastructure. AI is the essential infrastructure of our time, just as electricity and the internet once were,” said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s founder and CEO, during the announcement.
French President Emmanuel Macron emphasised the strategic importance of the initiative: “France is committed to investing in AI to strengthen our economy, benefit our citizens and uphold our values. By working closely with our nation’s leading technology innovators and NVIDIA, we are equipping researchers, entrepreneurs and public institutions with the tools they need to explore new ideas.”
Country-Specific Infrastructure Projects
France leads with Mistral AI’s ambitious cloud platform, powered by 18,000 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell systems in its initial phase. The project will expand across multiple sites in 2026, enabling rapid development and deployment of AI applications using optimised Mistral AI models.
The United Kingdom is collaborating with cloud partners Nebius and Nscale to deploy 14,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs across new data centres. UK Tech Secretary Peter Kyle described the initiative as vital for delivering the nation’s AI ambitions and transforming AI Growth Zones into “engines of opportunity.”
Germany will host the world’s first industrial AI cloud for European manufacturers, featuring NVIDIA DGX B200 systems and RTX PRO servers with 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. This AI factory will accelerate manufacturing applications from design and engineering to factory digital twins and robotics.
Italy is advancing sovereign AI capabilities through partnerships with Domyn, which is developing its Large Colosseum reasoning model on the Colosseum supercomputer using NVIDIA Grace Blackwell Superchips.
Telecommunications Infrastructure Partnership
NVIDIA has secured partnerships with major European telecommunications providers—Orange, Fastweb, Swisscom, Telefónica, and Telenor—to develop secure, scalable AI infrastructure across the region.
Notable developments include Orange’s acceleration of enterprise-grade AI through its Cloud Avenue platform, Fastweb’s introduction of MIIA (an Italian language model), and Telefónica’s pilot of a distributed edge AI fabric across Spain with hundreds of NVIDIA GPUs.
Research and Development Expansion
The company is establishing and expanding AI technology centres across Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Finland. These centres will focus on AI skills development, research advancement, and infrastructure support for enterprises and startups.
The Bavarian AI centre in Germany will collaborate with the Bayern KI consortium on digital medicine and robotics research, whilst the UK centre will focus on embodied AI, materials science, and Earth systems modelling.
Minister Adolfo Urso of Italy’s Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy described the agreement as “a strategic step toward strengthening Italy’s technological sovereignty and ensuring that our businesses have secure and competitive access to data management.”
NVIDIA’s plans represent a significant commitment to European AI sovereignty, enabling enterprises, startups, and public sector organisations to develop and deploy AI applications securely within regional infrastructure.