Autonomous vehicles and robotics are going to take off in a big way in the years ahead, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

“This is going to be the decade of AV [autonomous vehicles], robotics, autonomous machines,” Huang told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal Thursday at the Viva Tech conference in Paris.

Nvidia plays a significant role in the rollout of driverless vehicles as the U.S. chipmaking giant sells both hardware and software solutions for AVs.

Self-driving cars are being spotted more frequently in the U.S., where Google-owned Waymo is operating robotaxi services in parts of San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a number of Chinese companies including Baidu and Pony.ai are also running their own respective robotaxi fleets.

Europe, on the other hand, is yet to see significant AV adoption — primarily because the regulations are not yet clear enough for self-driving technology companies to get their services off the ground.

However, the technology is beginning to gain more traction. In the U.K., legislation called the Autonomous Vehicles Act has been passed into law, paving the way for self-driving vehicles to arrive on roads by 2026.

Uber on Tuesday announced a partnership with British self-driving car technology firm Wayve to launch trials of fully autonomous rides in the U.K., starting in spring 2026.

If the U.S. continues to impose AI semiconductor restrictions on China, then chipmaker Huawei will take advantage of its position in the world’s second-largest economy, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC Thursday.

“Our technology is a generation ahead of theirs,” Huang told CNBC at the sidelines of the Viva Technology conference in Paris.

However, he warned that: “If the United States doesn’t want to partake, participate in China, Huawei has got China covered, and Huawei has got everybody else covered.”

In the face of U.S. export curbs that restrict Chinese firms from buying advanced semiconductors used in the development of AI, Beijing has focused on nurturing domestic firms such as Huawei in a bid to build its own AI chip ecosystem.

Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei this week told the People’s Daily Newspaper of the governing Communist party that Huawei’s single chip is still behind the U.S. by a generation.

“The United States has exaggerated Huawei’s achievements. Huawei is not that great. We have to work hard to reach their evaluation,” Ren said in comments reported by Reuters.

This is a developing news story and will be updated shortly.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday made a pitch for his country to manufacture the most advanced chips in the world, in a bid to position itself as a critical tech hub in Europe.

The comments come as European tech companies and countries are reassessing their reliance on foreign technology firms for critical technology and infrastructure.

Chipmaking in particular arose as a topic after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who was doing a panel talk alongside Macron and Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch, said on Wednesday that the company’s first graphics processing unit (GPU) was manufactured in France by SGS Thomson Microelectronics, now known as STMicroelectronics.

Yet STMicroelectronics is currently not at the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing. Most of the chips it makes are for industries like the automotive one, which don’t required the most cutting-edge semiconductors.

Macron nevertheless laid his ambition out for France to be able to manufacture semiconductors in the range of 2 nanometers to 10 nanometers.

“If we want to consolidate our industry, we have now to get more and more of the chips at the right scale,” Macron said on Wednesday.

The smaller the nanometer number, the more transistors that can be fit into a chip, leading to a more powerful semiconductor. Apple’s latest iPhone chips, for instance, are based on 3 nanometer technology.

Very few companies are able to manufacture chips at this level and on a large scale, with Samsung and Nvidia provider Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) leading the pack.

If France wants to produce these cutting-edge chips, it will likely need TSMC or Samsung to build a factory locally — something that has been happening in the U.S. TSMC has now committed billions of dollars to build more factories Stateside.

Macron touted a deal between Thales, Radiall and Taiwan’s Foxconn, which are exploring setting up a semiconductor assembly and test facility in France.

“I want to convince them to make the manufacturing in France,” Macron said during VivaTech — one of France’s biggest tech events — on the same day Nvidia’s Huang announced a slew of deals to build more artificial intelligence infrastructure in Europe.

One key partnership announced by Huang is between Nvidia and French AI model firm Mistral to build a so-called “AI cloud.”

France has looked to build out its AI infrastructure and Macron in February said that the country’s AI sector would receive 109 billion euros ($125.6 billion) in private investments in the coming years. Macron touted the Nvidia and Mistral deal as an extension of France’s AI buildout.

“We are deepening them [investments] and we are accelerating. And what Mistral AI and Nvidia announced this morning is a game-changer as well,” Macron told CNBC on Wednesday.