According to Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the European Union is significantly lagging behind the United States and China in artificial intelligence (AI) investments. He made this statement during a visit to Copenhagen, where he emphasized the need for the EU to accelerate its AI progress. Despite having only a few AI companies, such as France’s Mistral and Germany’s Aleph Alpha, the EU has implemented the world’s first comprehensive AI regulations, which took effect in August.
Huang was in Denmark to unveil a new supercomputer named Gefion, built by Nvidia in collaboration with the Novo Nordisk Foundation and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund. The Gefion supercomputer features 1,528 graphics processing units (GPUs), which are crucial for enhancing AI applications. Nvidia is the leading GPU manufacturer globally, and its technology was instrumental in creating OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Denmark intends to utilize this supercomputer for various purposes, including drug discovery and disease diagnosis.
In related news, the EU’s nominee for antitrust chief, Teresa Ribera, has pledged to strengthen the bloc’s regulatory measures against Big Tech and curb foreign companies that receive unfair state subsidies. The EU passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in 2022, which mandates greater consumer choice among tech services and imposes extra regulations on major companies, including Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok’s owner, ByteDance.
Ribera expressed her commitment to robustly enforce the DMA and ensure that antitrust investigations do not drag on excessively. She aims to protect small and mid-sized businesses from acquisitions that could harm competition, as the EU has struggled to nurture leading companies in the clean tech sector due to a fragmented capital market.
Additionally, Ribera highlighted the need for a new industrial strategy to address challenges in the automotive industry and reduce perceived unfair competition from heavily subsidized Chinese firms in sectors like electric vehicles. The EU recently imposed tariffs of up to 45% on Chinese-made electric vehicles, signaling a strong stance against foreign subsidies.
