"I am giving you money!" Nvidia's CEO wants every country to build its own AI

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is crisscrossing Europe with a multibillion-dollar checkbook and a grand ambition: Make his company the indispensable backbone of the global AI economy.

Why it matters: As fears of an AI bubble rattle Wall Street, Huang is working to spread the boom beyond the U.S. and China — courting governments, bankrolling startups and cultivating massive new markets for Nvidia's chips.

The big picture: The godfather of AI is trying to single-handedly build a new market for Nvidia chips, betting that governments and institutions around the world will want their own, highly customized data centers running open models.

If it works, it could shore up demand for Nvidia chips just as another big group of customers — neoclouds — appear financially shaky.

Driving the news: Part showman, part salesman, Huang has spent the past week preaching the gospel of AI across Europe ahead of a keynote Wednesday at Nvidia's flagship conference in Berlin.

In France, Huang announced investments in four startups and joked, whisky glass in hand , that he's "the biggest VC in Europe." President Emmanuel Macron welcomed him to Paris, while France's economy minister compared the AI revolution to the Gold Rush.

In Britain, Huang channeled Oprah Winfrey while announcing stakes in five startups.

"I am giving you money! And I am giving you money! And I am giving you money!" he shouted from the stage of a converted London church.

In Sweden, Huang unveiled a supercomputer backed by the country's industrial elite, likening Nvidia's technology to a "time machine" capable of compressing years of scientific research into days.

In Germany, Huang challenged Chancellor Friedrich Merz to loosen Europe's regulatory instincts.

"There's nothing to regulate if the industry doesn't thrive," he warned Monday.

"Give Germany a chance.

Give this industry a chance." Zoom in: At the heart of Huang's global strategy is "sovereign AI" — the idea that every nation should build and control its own AI infrastructure, data and models, rather than depend on U.S. or Chinese tech giants.

In addition to roughly $10 billion in investments in Europe, Nvidia is helping build national AI ecosystems across Saudi Arabia, South Korea, India, Malaysia and Africa.