What I learned after Jensen Fan around Europe

nvidia Boss Jensen Fan took a tour of Europe this week, bringing excitement and intrigue to every place he visited.

His message was clear. Nvidia is a company that can help Europe build artificial intelligence infrastructure. This allows the region to control its own destiny with transformative technology.

This week, following London and Paris, Han met with British President Kiel Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, journalists, fans and analysts, giving a keynote speech at Nvidia’s GTC event in the French capital.

This is what I saw and what I learned.

Huang is the current rock star in the world of The Tech.

At London Tech Week, the line was long and the auditorium was packed to listen to him speak.

There were also many GTC events in Paris. It was like going to a music concert or a sporting event. There were GTC Paris T-shirts behind all the chairs, and even merchandise stores.

Han’s aura really hit me when most people lined up to take photos and selfies with him after a room full of questions and answer sessions and attendees.

Macron and Starmer wanted to see them on stage with him.

An important product from Nvidia is the graphics processing unit (GPU) used to train and run AI applications.

However, Huang positions Nvidia as more than a tip company. During the week he described Nvidia as an infrastructure company. He also said that AI should be viewed as an infrastructure like electricity.

His pitch to all countries was that it could become a company that would help Nvidia build its infrastructure.

“We believe that Europe needs to work together to build a meaningful ecosystem to compete and build a meaningful capacity,” Huang said in a speech at the Viva Tech Conference in Paris on Wednesday.

One of the most important partnerships announced this week is between French startup Mistral and NVIDIA, which uses the latter GPU to build the so-called AI cloud.

Huang talked a lot about “Sovereign AI” a week. This is the concept of building data centers within the borders of countries that serve the population, rather than relying on servers located overseas. This was an important topic among European policymakers and businesses.

Huang also praised the UK, France and Europe more widely for its potential in the AI ​​industry.

On Thursday, Huang decided to tour the Nvidia booth and managed to catch him to get some words about CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

The key topic of that discussion was China. Nvidia is unable to sell the most sophisticated chips to China due to US export control, and even sophisticated semiconductors are blocked. In the results of the last quarter, Nvidia scored a $4.5 billion hit with unsold inventory.

We asked Huang about how China is making progress with AI chips. In particular, we referred to Huawei, a Chinese technology giant that is trying to create semiconductor products that rival Nvidia.

Huang said Huawei is in the Nvidia generation. However, because China has a lot of energy, Huawei can use more chips to get results.

“If the US doesn’t want to participate, if they don’t want to participate, then Huawei covers China and Huawei covers everyone else,” Huang said.

Furthermore, Huang is concerned about the strategic importance of US companies not being able to access China.

“It’s even more important that the American technology stack is something AI developers around the world build,” says Huang.

Just reading between the lines to some extent, Huang sees the world where Chinese AI technology advances. Some countries may decide to build AI infrastructure with Chinese companies rather than the US. This could give Chinese companies the opportunity to participate in AI races.

Yellow often uses the general appearance to talk about the future.

I asked him about some of the areas he’s bullish like robotics, unmanned cars, and technology that Nvidia products can power.

Huang told me this would be “10 years” in self-driving cars and robotics.

In his keynote speech at GTC Paris on Wednesday, he also works on quantum computing, saying that technology has reached an “inflection point.”

It is widely believed that quantum computers can solve complex problems that classical computers cannot. This includes discovering new drugs and materials.