Speaking to the gathered throngs the VivaTech event in Paris, Huang claimed that at least 20 AI data centres are on the drawing board across Europe, with a tenfold increase in capacity coming within two years. Five of these will be "gigafactories" stacked with hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s GPU units, the silicon crack powering large language models.

“Europe is going all in on AI,” Huang announced, promising a deluge of infrastructure to close the transatlantic gap.

Much of the action hinges on Nvidia’s deeper ties with Mistral AI, the French outfit posing as Europe’s best shot at building a local OpenAI or DeepSeek rival.

Mistral, which already counts Nvidia among its investors, plans to slap 18,000 Blackwell GPUs into a facility in Essonne, just outside Paris. Mistral chief Arthur Mensch called the move a "transformative step" that would back Europe's drive for technological sovereignty.

The announcement came hot on the heels of Huang’s moaning in London that the UK was floundering in its AI ambitions due to pathetic infrastructure. Meanwhile, cloud minnows like Nscale and Nebius now say they’ll throw together GPU-packed centres on British soil.

Nvidia’s been flogging the idea of "sovereign AI" like it’s the next big thing, partly because it wants to stop being reliant on a few bloated American Big Tech firms that keep hogging its chips. Spreading the love to Europe gives Nvidia more clients and more influence without giving up on its sky-high margins.

Power, planning delays and not enough engineers have all held back Europe’s AI ambitions, with a McKinsey report last October warning it could cost as much as $300 billion to get up to speed. The report also said power demands from data centres would nearly triple by 2030, assuming they ever get built.

Still, Huang was full of bluster in Paris, saying a wave of "indigenous-built AI infrastructure...Your AI shortage, your GPU shortage, will be resolved for you soon,” he told the great unwashed.