Speech in Berlin

Jensen Huang, the Nvidia chief executive, gave a keynote on Wednesday, 21 October, at a company conference for developers and investors held at Berlin's Tempodrom auditorium. AP reported that some 3,000 developers, analysts and journalists attended. Handelsblatt described crowds forming outside the venue two hours before the speech and said the address lasted about an hour and a half. Huang, who is 63 according to Handelsblatt, walked onto the stage in his familiar leather jacket and sneakers.

Huang set an upbeat tone from the start of his talk.

“Europe's AI economy is starting, and it's accelerating, and it's great to see.”

A few protesters stood up with a banner urging him to "clean up" his business, and he was briefly interrupted before security removed them. Huang told them he would talk to them later and asked security to avoid rough handling.

A pitch for Europe's AI build-out

Huang argued that Europe lags in AI infrastructure and offered Nvidia's answer: a modular computing center called the Vera Rubin DSK Pod, delivered in a box resembling a shipping container. He said it would cut the time needed to set up a data center from months to days. AP put Europe's share of the world's AI computing capacity at about 5%, compared with 75% in the United States. Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, president and managing director of General Catalyst, which invests in AI companies, named the shortfall ahead of the speech.

“The big bottleneck is compute.”

Europe5%

United States75%

Europe

5 %

United States

75 %

Data from the article text

Investment and new hardware

Huang said Nvidia had invested $10 billion in European startups and partners over the past year. According to newsORF, he also introduced desk computers called RTX Spark, which can run complex AI tasks without relying on external data centers. He showed robots that learn through AI to find their way around and carry out tasks, a theme he tied to what he called physical AI. He made clear that he sees the shift as sweeping.

“Every company in the future will be an AI company.”

A tour of European capitals

Axios reported that Huang spent the week before the keynote touring Europe. In France he announced investments in four startups and was welcomed in Paris by President Emmanuel Macron. In Britain he announced stakes in five startups at a converted church in London, where he told the audience he was giving them money. In Sweden he unveiled a supercomputer backed by the country's industrial elite. In Germany he challenged Chancellor Friedrich Merz to loosen Europe's regulatory instincts, arguing that there is nothing to regulate if the industry does not thrive.

Markets watch the debt

Axios framed the tour against fears of an AI bubble that have rattled Wall Street, and said Huang is trying to build new markets for Nvidia chips among governments and institutions. It noted that neocloud companies, another group of chip customers, appear financially shaky. Bloomberg reported that some investors are growing more skeptical about the sums being poured into AI infrastructure. It also said credit markets will be listening closely to Huang for signs of how Nvidia will use debt to finance its investments in the AI build-out, and that debt raised by hyperscalers and other AI firms has already rattled markets.