Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., left, and Emmanuel Macron, France’s president at the 2025 VivaTech conference in Paris, France, on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang has been on a tour of Europe this week, bringing excitement and intrigue to everywhere he visited.
His message was clear — Nvidia is the company that can help Europe build its artificial intelligence infrastructure so the region can take control of its own destiny with the transformative technology.
I’ve been in London and Paris this week following Huang around as he met with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, journalists, fans, analysts and gave a keynote at Nvidia’s GTC event in the capital of France.
Here’s the what I saw and the key things I learned.
At London Tech Week, the lines were long and the auditorium packed to hear him speak.
The GTC event in Paris was full too. It was like going to a music concert or sporting event. There were GTC Paris T-shirts on the back of every chair and even a merchandise store.
Nvidia GTC in Paris on 11 June 2025
Arjun Kharpal
The aura of Huang really struck me when, after a question-and-answer session with him and a room full of attendees, most people lined up to take pictures or selfies with him.
Macron and Starmer both wanted to be seen on stage with him.
Nvidia positions itself as Europe’s AI hope
Nvidia’s key product is its graphics processing units (GPU) that are used to train and execute AI applications.
But Huang has positioned Nvidia as more than a chip company. During the week, he described Nvidia as an infrastructure firm. He also said AI should be seen as infrastructure like electricity.
His pitch to all countries was that Nvidia could be the company that will help countries build out that infrastructure.
“We believe that in order to compete, in order to build a meaningful ecosystem, Europe needs to come together and build capacity that is joint,” Huang said during a speech at the Viva Tech conference in Paris on Wednesday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
One of the most significant partnerships announced this week is between French startup Mistral and Nvidia to build a so-called AI cloud using the latter’s GPUs.
Huang spoke a lot during the week about “sovereign AI” — the concept of building data centers within a country’s borders that services its population rather than relying on servers located overseas. Among European policymakers and companies, this has been an important topic.
Huang also heaped praise on the U.K., France and Europe more broadly when it came to their potential in the AI industry.
China still behind but catching up
On Thursday, Huang decided to do a tour of Nvidia’s booth and I managed to catch him to get a few words on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
A key topic of that discussion was China. Nvidia has not been able to sell its most advanced chips to China because of U.S. export controls and even less sophisticated semiconductors are being blocked. In its last quarterly results, Nvidia took a $4.5 billion hit on unsold inventory.
I asked Huang about how China was progressing with AI chips, in particular referencing Huawei, the Chinese tech giant that is trying to make semiconductor products to rival Nvidia.
Huang said Huawei is a generation behind Nvidia. But because there is lots of energy in China, Huawei can just use more chips to get results.
“If the United States doesn’t want to partake, participate in China, Huawei has got China covered, and Huawei has got everybody else covered,” Huang said.
In addition, Huang is concerned about the strategic importance of U.S. companies not having access to China.
“It’s even more important that the American technology stack is what AI developers around the world build on,” Huang said.
Just reading between the lines somewhat — Huang sees a world where Chinese AI tech advances. Some countries may decide to build their AI infrastructure with Chinese companies rather than American. That in turn could give Chinese companies a chance to be in the AI race.
Quantum, robotics and driverless is the future
Huang often uses public appearances to talk about the future.
I asked him about some of those areas he’s bullish on like robotics and driverless cars, technology that Nvidia’s products can power.
Huang told me this will be the “decade of” autonomous vehicles and robotics.
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang delivers a speech on stage talking about robotics.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
During his keynote at GTC Paris on Wednesday, he also address quantum computing, saying the technology is reaching “an inflection point.”
Quantum computers are widely believed to be able to solve complex problems that classic computers can’t. This could include things like discovering new drugs or materials.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.
The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.
Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.
The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.
In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.
Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.
As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.
One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.
HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.
There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.