Nvidia CEO urges Europe to embrace AI

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urged European companies on Wednesday to embrace artificial intelligence, saying industries from cars and manufacturing to healthcare and banking would need to work with the technology.

Speaking at a Nvidia-hosted conference in Berlin, Huang said European companies “have to become AI companies” as the United States and China continue to drive much of the technology’s development.

Concern has grown in Europe that traditional industrial companies could fall behind as software and AI become more important to product design and performance. Some backers of “industrial AI” argue that Europe’s machine makers have valuable factory data that can be used to train AI tools.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made a similar appeal on Monday to the country’s small and midsize industrial firms, urging them to open their doors for AI to use company data.

Huang also promoted Nvidia OpenShell, which he described as a sandbox that would let users make sure AI agents do not overstep user-defined boundaries.

A September survey of 603 companies by German digital association Bitkom found that 45% of respondents were concerned that using third-party AI tools could undermine the security of sensitive commercial data.