Nvidia's first GPU was made in France — Macron wants the country to produce cutting edge chips again
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday made a pitch for his country to manufacture the most advanced chips in the world, in a bid to position itself as a critical tech hub in Europe.
The comments come as European tech companies and countries are reassessing their reliance on foreign technology firms for critical technology and infrastructure.
Chipmaking in particular arose as a topic after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who was doing a panel talk alongside Macron and Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch, said on Wednesday that the company's first graphics processing unit (GPU) was manufactured in France by SGS Thomson Microelectronics, now known as STMicroelectronics.
Yet STMicroelectronics is currently not at the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing. Most of the chips it makes are for industries like the automotive one, which don't required the most cutting-edge semiconductors.
Macron nevertheless laid his ambition out for France to be able to manufacture semiconductors in the range of 2 nanometers to 10 nanometers.
"If we want to consolidate our industry, we have now to get more and more of the chips at the right scale," Macron said on Wednesday.
The smaller the nanometer number, the more transistors that can be fit into a chip, leading to a more powerful semiconductor. Apple's latest iPhone chips, for instance, are based on 3 nanometer technology.
Very few companies are able to manufacture chips at this level and on a large scale, with Samsung and Nvidia provider Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) leading the pack.
If France wants to produce these cutting-edge chips, it will likely need TSMC or Samsung to build a factory locally — something that has been happening in the U.S. TSMC has now committed billions of dollars to build more factories Stateside.
Macron touted a deal between Thales, Radiall and Taiwan's Foxconn, which are exploring setting up a semiconductor assembly and test facility in France.
"I want to convince them to make the manufacturing in France," Macron said during VivaTech — one of France's biggest tech events — on the same day Nvidia's Huang announced a slew of deals to build more artificial intelligence infrastructure in Europe.
One key partnership announced by Huang is between Nvidia and French AI model firm Mistral to build a so-called "AI cloud."
France has looked to build out its AI infrastructure and Macron in February said that the country's AI sector would receive 109 billion euros ($125.6 billion) in private investments in the coming years. Macron touted the Nvidia and Mistral deal as an extension of France's AI buildout.
"We are deepening them [investments] and we are accelerating. And what Mistral AI and Nvidia announced this morning is a game-changer as well," Macron told CNBC on Wednesday.
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