Europe wants to be part of the AI race against China and the U.S. — and shake off its anti-innovation image
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaks with French President Emmanuel Macron at Station F, during an event on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, France, Feb. 11, 2025.
Aurelien Morissard | Via Reuters
PARIS — Music was blaring and people were cheering at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris on Monday as French President Emmanuel Macron declared France is “back in the AI race.”
The bold call comes after Macron touted a 109 billion euro ($112.8 billion) investment in AI in the country. But it also underscores Europe’s desire, led by France, to be a part of the conversation around AI leadership and innovation that has so far been dominated by the U.S. and China.
Last month, America’s $500 billion Stargate announcement made headlines globally, followed by DeepSeek’s AI model, which sent shock waves across financial markets and highlighted China’s ability to keep apace with U.S. innovation.
Europe has long been seen by its critics as a place that has regulated the tech industry too heavily to the detriment of innovation.
Though that image has not entirely been changed, there are some in the technology industry who think Europe is moving in the right direction.
“As a European region, at least, we are starting to see global leaders emerge, and that’s the thing we really need,” Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video company Synthesia, told CNBC in an interview on Monday.
There are a number of key companies in Europe, ranging from self-driving technology startup Wayve in the U.K. to OpenAI rival Mistral in France.
“So I think it’s great that we invest more in infrastructure. I don’t think it’s the sole solution to the problem. … But what I think is really great is that there’s political will to actually do something,” Riparbelli added.
‘Fork in the road’
Last year, economist and politician Mario Draghi released a report that urged more investment in the European Union in order to boost competitiveness.
Draghi’s report noted that there are innovative ideas, but startups are “failing to translate innovation into commercialisation, and innovative companies that want to scale up in Europe are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations.”
Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, told CNBC on Monday that based on his experience at the AI Action Summit, there is tension between Europe at the EU level and the countries within it.
“You can get this sense that there’s almost this fork in the road, maybe even a tension right now between a Europe at the EU level that is looking at a fairly significant, heavier regulatory approach. And then some of the countries, a France, a Germany, a UK, though not technically the EU, certainly European, they’re looking to maybe go in a little bit of a different direction that actually wants to embrace the innovation,” Lehane told CNBC.
He said that previous AI summits hosted by the U.K. and South Korea have focused on the safety around AI, but the Paris edition has a change of tone.
“I think this conference, you’re beginning to see maybe a different definition or consideration, that perhaps the bigger risk right now is missing out on the opportunity,” Lehane added.
Europe the ‘referee’
Still, the image of Europe as a burdensome place for tech regulation has not been shaken.
The EU’s AI Act was the first major law in the world governing artificial intelligence to go into effect in 2024. It has been criticized by companies as well as individual countries such as France which have said that the legislation could stifle innovation.
“One of the metaphors I sometimes use you look at AI as a World Cup football match between the U.S. and China. And if all Europe is trying to do is be the referee, there’s two problems. One, they never win, and two, no one really likes the referee,” Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and an investor at venture capital firm Greylock, told CNBC on Monday.
Christel Heydemann, the CEO of telecommunications firm Orange, told CNBC in an interview on Tuesday that there is too much regulation in Europe.
“So that’s that’s slowing us down, especially when you think about the potential of the European market,” Heydemann said.
She did, however, strike an optimistic tone on Europe’s position on AI.
I don’t think, in the end, it’s a race between U.S. and China. Actually, the president of the European Commission has been very clear, Europe wants to be a continent of AI, and the race is not over yet,” Heydemann added.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang introduces new products as he delivers the keynote address at the GTC AI Conference in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
At the end of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s unscripted two-hour keynote on Tuesday, his message was clear: Get the fastest chips that the company makes.
Speaking at Nvidia’s GTC conference, Huang said that questions clients have about the cost and return on investment the company’s graphics processors, or GPUs, will go away with faster chips that can be digitally sliced and used to serve artificial intelligence to millions of people at the same time.
“Over the next 10 years, because we could see improving performance so dramatically, speed is the best cost-reduction system,” Huang said in a meeting with journalists shortly after his GTC keynote.
The company dedicated 10 minutes during Huang’s speech to explain the economics of faster chips for cloud providers, complete with Huang doing envelope math out loud on each chip’s cost-per-token, a measure of how much it costs to create one unit of AI output.
Huang told reporters that he presented the math because that’s what’s on the mind of hyperscale cloud and AI companies.
The company’s Blackwell Ultra systems, coming out this year, could provide data centers 50 times more revenue than its Hopper systems because it’s so much faster at serving AI to multiple users, Nvidia says.
Investors worry about whether the four major cloud providers — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle — could slow down their torrid pace of capital expenditures centered around pricey AI chips. Nvidia doesn’t reveal prices for its AI chips, but analysts say Blackwell can cost $40,000 per GPU.
Already, the four largest cloud providers have bought 3.6 million Blackwell GPUs, under Nvidia’s new convention that counts each Blackwell as 2 GPUs. That’s up from 1.3 million Hopper GPUs, Blackwell’s predecessor, Nvidia said Tuesday.
The company decided to announce its roadmap for 2027’s Rubin Next and 2028’s Feynman AI chips, Huang said, because cloud customers are already planning expensive data centers and want to know the broad strokes of Nvidia’s plans.
“We know right now, as we speak, in a couple of years, several hundred billion dollars of AI infrastructure” will be built, Huang said. “You’ve got the budget approved. You got the power approved. You got the land.”
Huang dismissed the notion that custom chips from cloud providers could challenge Nvidia’s GPUs, arguing they’re not flexible enough for fast-moving AI algorithms. He also expressed doubt that many of the recently announced custom AI chips, known within the industry as ASICs, would make it to market.
“A lot of ASICs get canceled,” Huang said. “The ASIC still has to be better than the best.”
Huang said his is focus on making sure those big projects use the latest and greatest Nvidia systems.
“So the question is, what do you want for several $100 billion?” Huang said.
Microsoft’s Amy Coleman (L) and Kathleen Hogan (R).
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft said Wednesday that company veteran Amy Coleman will become its new executive vice president and chief people officer, succeeding Kathleen Hogan, who has held the position for the past decade.
Hogan will remain an executive vice president but move to a newly established Office of Strategy and Transformation, which is an expansion of the office of the CEO. She will join Microsoft’s group of top executives, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
Coleman is stepping into a major role, given that Microsoft is among the largest employers in the U.S., with 228,000 total employees as of June 2024. She has worked at the company for more than 25 years over two stints, having first joined as a compensation manager in 1996.
Hogan will remain on the senior leadership team.
“Amy has led HR for our corporate functions across the company for the past six years, following various HR roles partnering across engineering, sales, marketing, and business development spanning 25 years,” Nadella wrote in a memo to employees.
“In that time, she has been a trusted advisor to both Kathleen and to me as she orchestrated many cross-company workstreams as we evolved our culture, improved our employee engagement model, established our employee relations team, and drove enterprise crisis response for our people,” he wrote.
Hogan arrived at Microsoft in 2003 after being a development manager at Oracle and a partner at McKinsey. Under Hogan, some of Microsoft’s human resources practices evolved. She has emphasized the importance of employees having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset, drawing on concepts from psychologist Carol Dweck.
“We came up with some big symbolic changes to show that we really were serious about driving culture change, from changing the performance-review system to changing our all-hands company meeting, to our monthly Q&A with the employees,” Hogan said in a 2019 interview with Business Insider.
Hogan pushed for managers to evaluate the inclusivity of employees and oversaw changes in the handling of internal sexual harassment cases.
Coleman had been Microsoft’s corporate vice president for human resources and corporate functions for the past four years. In that role, she was responsible for 200 HR workers and led the development of Microsoft’s hybrid work approach, as well as the HR aspect of the company’s Covid response, according to her LinkedIn profile.
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