Europe Fights for AI Independence to Avoid Becoming Tech ‘Colony’

In June, French president Emmanuel Macron held an exclusive dinner at the Élysée Palace with a special guest: Nvidia's Jensen Huang. Wine glasses clinked in honor of a deal his company had just unveiled with Mistral, the leading French artificial intelligence startup, to develop France's largest data centers.

Huang, dressed in a black t-shirt amid the Parisian suits, paused the celebrations for a brief warning about AI. “The problem in Europe and in France is: You are too slow,” Huang teased the attendees, according to Eléonore Crespo, an AI entrepreneur at the dinner. “It's like your wine. You wait for it to age, to be perfect.”