The chipmaker says it is working with European nations, and tech and industry leaders to build AI infra which will strengthen digital sovereignty, turn Europe into an AI leader
The world’s biggest maker of AI chips, NVIDIA, announced it is building an AI infrastructure, NVIDIA Blackwell, working with European countries, technology and industry leaders. The plan is, according to a NVIDIA press statement, to strengthen digital sovereignty, support economic growth and position the continent as a leader in the AI industrial revolution.
All of which are major concerns across the continent and of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, as geopolitics shift and AI becomes an economic imperative.
The European nations include France, Italy, Spain and the UK. Those named as being part of ecosystem of tech and cloud outfits are Domyn, Mistral AI, Nebius and Nscale. It is also collaborating with Orange, Swisscom, Telefónica and Telenor.
Telcos build AI infra for regional enterprises
NVIDIA is working with the operators “to develop secure, scalable sovereign AI infrastructure across the region”.
- Orange is accelerating the development of enterprise-grade AI, including agentic AI, large language models and personal AI assistants, using Orange Business’ Cloud Avenue, built on high-performance NVIDIA infrastructure.
- Fastweb introduced MIIA — an Italian language model to support generative AI applications — trained and running on its NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputer.
- Telenor is expanding its sovereign AI infrastructure in Norway with a new, renewable-powered data center, in addition to hosting a partner’s multilingual AI translation service, available in over 100 languages.
- Swisscom is launching new AI services, including GenAI Studio and AI Workhub hosted on its sovereign AI NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD-based infrastructure, empowering Swiss enterprises to rapidly build and scale AI applications.
- Telefónica is piloting a distributed edge AI fabric across Spain with hundreds of NVIDIA GPUs to deliver low-latency, privacy-focused AI services.
According to NVIDIA, “These collaborations enable enterprises to develop and deploy customised AI models and agentic applications at scale, tapping into telcos’ extensive networks and trusted role as critical infrastructure providers”.
Countries, industries and techcos
The Blackwell deployments will collectively offer more than 3,000 exaflops – that’s 1 quintillion (10^18) floating-point operations per second – of NVIDIA Blackwell compute resources by establishing and expanding AI tech centres in Finland, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain and the UK.
NVIDIA says this builds on its track record of collaborating with academic institutions and industry through the NVIDIA AI Technology Center program and NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute to develop the AI workforce and scientific discovery in some regions.
In France, Mistral AI is working with NVIDIA to build an end-to-end cloud platform powered by 18,000 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell systems in the first phase, with plans to expand across multiple sites in 2026.
Mistral AI is a French start-up, founded in 2023, to democratise access to AI by offering commercial and open-source large language models, tools and infrastructure for building and deploying AI solutions. Its emphasis is on transparency and decentralisation. Its tech is intended to enable organisations across Europe to quickly develop and deploy AI using optimised Mistral AI models and validated AI factory designs, accelerating the adoption of agentic AI applications. It already has collaborative partnerships in place with Orange and rival French operator Iliad Group.
In the UK, NVIDIA is collaborating with NVIDIA Cloud Partners Nebius and Nscale to unlock AI capabilities for enterprises and businesses of all sizes. The cloud providers’ first phase of infrastructure development is to deploy 14,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to power new data centres, to make scalable, secure AI infrastructure accessible across the UK.
In Germany, NVIDIA and partners are building what they claim is the world’s first industrial AI cloud for European manufacturers. It will be powered by NVIDIA DGX B200 systems and NVIDIA RTX PRO Servers running on 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. NVIDIA’s vision is that it will be used in every manufacturing application from design, to engineering and simulation, digital twins for factories and robotics.
In Italy, NVIDIA is working with Domyn and the government: Italy is developing Domyn Large Colosseum reasoning model on its supercomputer, Colosseum, with NVIDIA Grace Blackwell Superchips, in line with its mission to support regulated industries’ adoption of AI.
Third strand
As a third string to its European bow, NVIDIA is establishing and expanding technology centres in Finland Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain and the UK to accelerate AI skills development, research and infrastructure for the continent’s enterprises and start-ups.
- The Bavarian AI center in Germany is intended to advance research including for digital medicine, stable diffusion AI and open-source robotics platforms
- The Sweden AI center will have support from NVIDIA experts and hands-on training at the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute for upskilling.
- The Italy AI centre will expand to include new AI factory deployments with the CINECA consortium.
- The Spain AI center will expand to include a new AI factory with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
- The U.K. AI center will accelerate the U.K.’s most groundbreaking research in embodied AI, materials science and Earth systems modeling.
- The Finland AI center enables researchers to accelerate AI research and applications for computer vision, machine learning and AI for science.
Jensen Huang (pictured), Founder and CEO of NVIDIA, observed, “Every industrial revolution begins with infrastructure. AI is the essential infrastructure of our time, just as electricity and the internet once were. With bold leadership from Europe’s governments and industries, AI will drive transformative innovation and prosperity for generations to come.”
“These strategic initiatives across Europe build on NVIDIA investments in building AI infrastructure worldwide, including in Taiwan and the Middle East.
