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Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks during a news conference in Taipei on May 21, 2025. Cheng / AFP) (Photo by I-HWA CHENG/AFP via Getty Images)

I-hwa Cheng | Afp | Getty Images

Nvidia on Wednesday announced a slew of partnerships with European countries and companies spanning infrastructure to software as it looks to keep itself at the center of the global artificial intelligence story.

Chief Executive Jensen Huang on Wednesday continued his tour of Europe with a keynote at Nvidia’s GTC event in Paris, France, where he laid out some key European partnerships.

Nvidia has been keen to position itself as an infrastructure company that can help countries and governments build data centers using its graphics processing units to unlock the potential of AI for local economies and populations. As part of that effort, Huang recently carried out a similar whirlwind trip to the Middle East, where Nvidia is planning to sell its latest chips as part of big data center buildouts in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“Every industrial revolution begins with infrastructure. AI is the essential infrastructure of our time, just as electricity and the internet once were,” Huang said in a Wednesday press release.

“Europe has now awakened to the importance of these AI factories, the importance of this AI infrastructure,” Huang said during a separate presentation on Wednesday. AI factories is the term Nvidia uses for massive data centers containing its GPUs.

Huang added that AI computing capacity in Europe will grow by a factor of 10 in the next two years.

The tech giant seeks to expand its international footprint and embed itself in national level AI infrastructure. That push into new markets is even more critical as U.S. export restrictions on Nvidia’s most advanced chips have lost the company revenue in China.

Nvidia said it is working with country governments, regional cloud and telecommunications firms and technology centers in Europe.

One of the key partnerships announced is between Nvidia and French startup Mistral, which will build an “AI cloud” that will deploy 18,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips. This will allow businesses to develop and use AI through Mistral’s models, Nvidia said.

Nvidia also announced infrastructure projects in Italy and Armenia.

Orange and Telefonica are among the telecommunications companies also working with Nvidia in areas such as deploying AI applications and large language models as part of the newly announced deals.

In Germany, Nvidia said it is building what it has dubbed as an “industrial cloud” that will feature 10,000 GPUs and will be specifically designed to provide services for European manufacturers.

The big focus from Nvidia in Europe is around so-called “sovereign AI,” the idea that data centers and servers that are providing services to users in the European Union, are actually located regionally rather than abroad.

Nvidia also announced so-called “tech centers” in Europe, which will focus on advanced research, upskilling workforces and accelerating scientific breakthroughs in countries including the U.K., France, Spain and Germany.

Nvidia also expanded a product called DGX Cloud Lepton — something of a marketplace for GPUs — with new cloud providers and integrated it with AI model repository Hugging Face. DGX Cloud Lepton works by allowing developers to access GPUs across the world to run AI applications.

Software push

While Nvidia is best-known for its hardware — its infamous GPUs — the technology giant has ramped up its focus on its software offering to help keep the company at the center of fast-moving AI development.

That software push has continued into Europe.

Last year, Nvidia announced a product called Nvidia NIM, which is effectively a pre-packaged AI model that can be quickly deployed and that lets developers build apps on it. Nvidia on Wednesday announced any large language model available on Hugging Face can also be deployed as NIM.

Rather than creating their own models, developers can easily access these options via Nvidia’s NIM service.

Nvidia’s strategy is to link its hardware to all of this software, giving it an edge over rivals in a bid to cement its dominance so far in AI.

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Tesla plans ‘friends and family’ car service in California, regulator says

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Tesla plans 'friends and family' car service in California, regulator says

A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, US, on Sunday, June 22, 2025.

Tim Goessman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

In an earnings call this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased an expansion of his company’s fledgling robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area and other U.S. markets.

But California regulators are making clear that Tesla is not authorized to carry passengers on public roads in autonomous vehicles and would require a human driver in control at all times.

“Tesla is not allowed to test or transport the public (paid or unpaid) in an AV with or without a driver,” the California Public Utilities Commission told CNBC in an email on Friday. “Tesla is allowed to transport the public (paid or unpaid) in a non-AV, which, of course, would have a driver.”

In other words, Tesla’s service in the state will have to be more taxi than robot.

Tesla has what’s known in California as a charter-party carrier permit, which allows it to run a private car service with human drivers, similar to limousine companies or sightseeing services.

The commission said it received a notification from Tesla on Thursday that the company plans to “extend operations” under its permit to “offer service to friends and family of employees and to select members of the public,” across much of the Bay Area.

But under Tesla’s permit, that service can only be with non-AVs, the CPUC said.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles told CNBC that Tesla has had a “drivered testing permit” since 2014, allowing the company to operate AVs with a safety driver present, but not to collect fees. The safety drivers must be Tesla employees, contractors or designees of the manufacturer under that permit, the DMV said.

In Austin, Texas, Tesla is currently testing out a robotaxi service, using its Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest automated driving software and hardware. The limited service operates during daylight hours and in good weather, on roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour. 

Robotaxis in Austin are remotely supervised by Tesla employees, and include a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat. The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.”

EV price war is bleeding into robotaxis, intelligent driving: Expert

On Friday, Business Insider, citing an internal Tesla memo, reported that Tesla told staff it planned to expand its robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on that report.

In a separate matter in California, the DMV has accused Tesla of misleading consumers about the capabilities of its driver assistance systems, previously marketed under the names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (or FSD).

Tesla now calls its premium driver assistance features, “FSD Supervised.” In owners manuals, Tesla says Autopilot and FSD Supervised are “hands on” systems, requiring a driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times. 

But in user-generated videos shared by Tesla on X, the company shows customers using FSD hands-free while engaged in other tasks. The DMV is arguing that Tesla’s license to sell vehicles in California should be suspended, with arguments ongoing through Friday at the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings in Oakland.

Under California state law, autonomous taxi services are regulated at the state level. Some city and county officials said on Friday that they were out of the loop regarding a potential Tesla service in the state. 

Stephanie Moulton-Peters, a member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in a phone interview that she had not heard from Tesla about its plans. She urged the company to be more transparent.

“I certainly expect they will tell us and I think it’s a good business practice to do that,” she said.

Moulton-Peters said she was undecided on robotaxis generally and wasn’t sure how Marin County, located north of San Francisco, would react to Tesla’s service.

“The news of change coming always has mixed results in the community,” she said. 

Brian Colbert, another member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview that he’s open to the idea of Tesla’s service being a good thing but that he was disappointed in the lack of communication. 

“They should have done a better job about informing the community about the launch,” he said. 

Alphabet’s Waymo, which is far ahead of Tesla in the robotaxi market, obtained a number of permits from the DMV and CPUC before starting its driverless ride-hailing service in the state.

Waymo was granted a CPUC driverless deployment permit in 2023, allowing it to charge for rides in the state. The company has been seeking amendments to both its DMV and CPUC driverless deployment permits as it expands its service territory in the state.

— NBC’s David Ingram reported from San Francisco.

WATCH: Waymo testing self-driving cars with human drivers in New York and Philadelphia

Waymo begins testing self-driving cars with human drivers in New York and Philadelphia

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Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab

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Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers. 

Zhao’s name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.” Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is acting as Meta’s chief AI officer.

“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”

Read more CNBC tech news

In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao helped build OpenAI’s GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3, and he previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, according to Zuckerberg’s June memo.

Meta Superintelligence Labs will be where employees work on foundation models such as the open-source Llama family of AI models, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects.

The social media company will invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI compute infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.

“The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Zuckerberg wrote Friday.

WATCH: Meta announces massive ‘Prometheus’ & ‘Hyperion’ data center plans

Meta announces massive 'Prometheus' & 'Hyperion' data center plans

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Palantir joins list of 20 most valuable U.S. companies, with stock more than doubling in 2025

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Palantir joins list of 20 most valuable U.S. companies, with stock more than doubling in 2025

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, speaks on a panel titled Power, Purpose, and the New American Century at the Hill and Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

Palantir has hit another major milestone in its meteoric stock rise. It’s now one of the 20 most valuable U.S. companies.

The provider of software and data analytics technology to defense agencies saw its stock rise more than 2% on Friday to another record, lifting the company’s market cap to $375 billion, which puts it ahead of Home Depot and Procter & Gamble. The company’s market value was already higher than Bank of America and Coca-Cola.

Palantir has more than doubled in value this year as investors ramp up bets on the company’s artificial intelligence business and closer ties to the U.S. government. Since its founding in 2003 by Peter Thiel, CEO Alex Karp and others, the company has steadily accrued a growing list of customers.

Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business increased 45% to $373 million in its most recent quarter, while total sales rose 39% to $884 million. The company next reports results on Aug. 4.

Earlier this year, Palantir soared ahead of Salesforce, IBM and Cisco into the top 10 U.S. tech companies by market cap.

Buying the stock at these levels requires investors to pay hefty multiples. Palantir currently trades for 273 times forward earnings, according to FactSet. The only other company in the top 20 with a triple-digit ratio is Tesla at 175.

With $3.1 billion in total revenue over the past year, Palantir is a fraction the size of the next smallest company by sales among the top 20 by market cap. Mastercard, which is valued at $518 billion, is closest with sales over the past four quarters of roughly $29 billion.

WATCH: Palantir’s Mike Gallagher: Enforcing a ceasefire will require a greater investment of American power

Palantir's Mike Gallagher: Enforcing a ceasefire will require a greater investment of American power

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