Macron wants France to produce AI chips

Speaking at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron asked chip manufacturer Nvidia to commence production of advanced semiconductors in the country. He made the suggestion after CEO Jensen Huang told attendees the first Nvidia chip was made in France.

Macron spoke alongside Huang and Mistral AI’s CEO Arthur Mensch during a panel at the event. The discussion involved both France’s connection to chipmaking and its ambitions to catch up with the West in advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI).

Nvidia’s Huang revealed that the company’s first graphics processing unit (GPU) was manufactured in France by SGS Thomson Microelectronics, now known as STMicroelectronics. 

The company is one of Europe’s largest chipmakers, but only in lower-tier chips used in automotive and industrial applications. It does not manufacture powerful processors that support the latest AI systems.

President Macron wants France to manufacture advanced semiconductors

“If we want to consolidate our industry, we have now to get more and more of the chips at the right scale,” the French President said, calling for France to begin producing chips in the 2-nanometer to 10-nanometer range. The scale is necessary for high-performance computing and AI.

Only a few companies globally, including Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung, are currently able to manufacture chips at this scale in significant quantities. 

Macron insinuated that France may try to court such firms into building local fabrication plants like in the United States, where TSMC pledged 100 billion dollars for new chip facilities.

The president also mentioned a deal between French defense group Thales, electronics manufacturer Radiall, and Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn. The companies are reportedly planning to create a semiconductor assembly and testing facility in France. 

“I want to convince them to make the manufacturing in France,” Macron continued.

During the event, Nvidia announced several new partnerships to scale its AI infrastructure footprint in Europe. One of the announced collaborations is with Mistral AI, a 2023-founded French AI firm with a specialty in open source large language models and proprietary models.

“We are deepening investments with them and we are accelerating. And what Mistral AI and Nvidia announced this morning is very good as well,” Macron told reporters in a briefing after the event.

Mistral AI expansion to cover European demand

Mistral AI, headquartered in Paris, is arguably one of Europe’s leading AI model developers. The company recently released two new generative reasoning models that it claims “performs on par” with those from OpenAI and Google. 

These models were built using reinforcement learning, a process in which systems improve by solving problems through trial and reward rather than by being programmed with direct solutions.

In an interview on Wednesday, CEO Arthur Mensch said there’s an insatiable demand across Europe for AI solutions that are not reliant on US tech giants. 

“European leaders just don’t want to be talked to that way,” he surmised, referring to February comments by the US Vice President JD Vance, who believes America will dominate AI development and retain that lead in the foreseeable future.

Mistral is reportedly building a 40-megawatt data center powered by 18,000 Nvidia chips near Paris. The site could expand to 100 megawatts within 18 months to provide European clients with direct access to AI infrastructure free from US control.

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