Nvidia on Wednesday announced a flurry of alliances with European companies and governments that extend its influence in the artificial intelligence realm across the continent. Nvidia stock initially rose on the news before turning south.
In a speech at the company's GTC Paris conference, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said the chipmaker is working with partners in European countries to build both AI infrastructure and AI factories. AI infrastructure provides services for third parties to use while AI factories are built by companies for their own use.
Nvidia is partnering with European governments, telcos and cloud providers to deploy Nvidia technologies, he said. France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. are among the European nations building domestic AI infrastructure.
Also, Nvidia is expanding its network of technology centers across Europe, with new hubs in Finland, Germany, Spain, Italy and the U.K., to accelerate skills development.
On the stock market today, Nvidia stock fell 0.8% to close at 142.83.
At GTC Paris, Nvidia announced that it is building an industrial AI cloud for European manufacturers. The AI factory in Germany will use 10,000 graphics processing units, or GPUs. The facility will feature Nvidia DGX B200 systems and Nvidia RTX Pro servers. It will run Nvidia CUDA-X software libraries, Nvidia RTX and Omniverse-accelerated workloads.
European firms will be able to use the AI cloud for design, engineering and simulation applications.
Manufacturers Using AI
"In the era of AI, every manufacturer needs two factories: one for making things, and one for creating the intelligence that powers them," Huang said. "By building Europe's first industrial AI infrastructure, we're enabling the region's leading industrial companies to advance simulation-first, AI-driven manufacturing."
Meanwhile, European companies such as BMW, Maserati, Schaeffler and Volvo Cars already are using Nvidia-accelerated applications from software leaders Ansys, Cadence Design Systems and Siemens to improve their operations. They are using the systems for simulated product design, factory planning and other purposes.
Nvidia also announced an expanded partnership with Munich-based Siemens to accelerate AI capabilities in manufacturing.
In other GTC Paris news, Nvidia said it is collaborating with Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk to accelerate drug discovery efforts using AI.
Quantum Computing 'Inflection Point'
During his keynote speech, Huang said Nvidia is partnering with supercomputing centers and quantum hardware builders to advance hybrid quantum-AI research and accelerate quantum error correction.
"Quantum computing is reaching an inflection point," Huang said. "We are within reach of being able to apply quantum computing, quantum classical computing, in areas that can solve some interesting problems in the coming years."
His comments boosted quantum computing stocks, including IonQ, Quantum Computing and Rigetti Computing.
Nvidia Stock Is On 4 IBD Lists
William Blair analyst Sebastien Naji reiterated his outperform rating on Nvidia stock after the GTC Paris presentation and a meeting with analysts.
"We came away from the session with increased confidence in Nvidia's technical leadership and expanding opportunity set as agentic AI, autonomous driving, and robotics start to take off," Naji said in a client note.
Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon kept his outperform rating on Nvidia stock with a price target of 185.
Nvidia's "story looks strong," he said in a client note. "And given the Blackwell ramp and China de-risking, the setup into year-end appears very solid."
Nvidia stock is on four IBD lists: IBD 50, Leaderboard, Sector Leaders and Tech Leaders.
Follow Patrick Seitz on X, formerly Twitter, at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
