AI isn’t waiting. And this week, neither is Europe.
At London’s Olympia, under a ceiling of steel beams and enveloped by the thrum of startup pitches, it didn’t feel like the start of a conference — it felt like the start of something bigger.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang joined U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to open London Tech Week, a moment that signaled a clear shift: what used to be the domain of ambitious technology startups is now national policy — backed by investments in people, platforms and partnerships.
AI is transforming the entire ecosystem, everything from healthcare and manufacturing to scientific research, Huang told the audience. “I make this prediction – because of AI, every industry in the UK will be a tech industry,” Huang said.
Starmer added that his team is looking at every single department in government to see how AI can be used.
Starmer’s goal for the session was clear: to bring to life the real-world impact of the AI revolution and how AI is changing everyday lives for U.K. citizens.
“The U.K. has one of the richest AI communities of anywhere on the planet, the deepest thinkers, the best universities… and the third largest AI capital investment of anywhere in the world,” Huang said.
“So the ability to build these AI supercomputers here in the U.K. will naturally attract more startups, it will naturally enable the rich ecosystem of researchers here to do their life’s work,” Huang added.
To that end, NVIDIA will continue to invest in the U.K. “We’re going to start our AI lab here… we’re going to partner with the UK to upskill the ecosystem of developers into the world of AI,” Huang added.
All of these investments will build on one another. “Infrastructure enables more research, more research, more breakthroughs, more companies,” Huang said. That flywheel will start taking off; it’s already quite large.”
UK on the Move: Momentum in Action
This wasn’t just a symbolic handshake. It marked the U.K.’s acceleration toward embedding AI at the core of its economic strategy. A major announcement from Prime Minister Starmer confirmed the U.K. will invest ~£1 billion in AI research compute by 2030, with investments commencing this year.
- A national AI skills initiative supported by NVIDIA aims to train developers in advanced AI skills.
- A new NVIDIA AI Technology Center in the U.K. is launching to accelerate research in embodied AI, material science and earth system modeling.
- The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority is using NVIDIA tech to power its innovation sandbox for safe and secure AI experimentation.
- The U.K. government and NVIDIA also announced a new initiative to accelerate AI-native 6G research and deployment.
- And further cementing the U.K.’s compute power, Isambard AI, the U.K.’s fastest AI supercomputer powered by 5.5k GH200s, is set to be fully operational this summer.
“We need to showcase what we have,” Starmer said. “This is a two-way conversation” between the government and industry.
Starmer underscored the U.K.’s “sovereign AI ambitions,” emphasizing that AI is not just about technology, but about codifying a nation’s culture, common sense and history.
And the movement isn’t confined to the U.K. Across Europe, governments are no longer debating whether AI matters. Now the question in every capital isn’t why AI, it’s how soon can we deploy it at scale?
- In Sweden, NVIDIA is working with Wallenberg Investments, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Saab and SEB to build the country’s first national AI infrastructure, anchored by the NVIDIA Grace Blackwell platform.
- In Germany, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre is building Blue Lion — a €250 million supercomputer based on the new NVIDIA Vera Rubin architecture, designed for real-time AI, simulation and science.
- In France, a joint venture between MGX, Bpifrance, Mistral AI and NVIDIA will establish Europe’s largest AI Campus in the Paris region, a 1.4 GW facility aiming to build sovereign and sustainable AI infrastructure for the continent.
“In the last 10 years, AI has advanced 1 million times,” Huang said. “The speed of change is incredible.”
NVIDIA’s commitment to the U.K. is evident, with over 1,700 Inception members and 500 employees across four offices.
NVIDIA is actively building the ‘AI factories of the future’ with leading U.K. companies.
And it’s powering the next generation of startups and scale-ups, from Basecamp Research to Wayve.
What Comes Next: NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech
Next, the story moves to Paris, where Jensen Huang will headline NVIDIA GTC Paris live from VivaTech.
June 11 | 11:00 a.m. CEST | Dôme de Paris
VivaTech or GTC Paris pass required to attend
Livestream available globally, free
Expect news on NVIDIA Blackwell, sovereign AI initiatives, new regional partnerships and how European innovators are turning intent into infrastructure with NVIDIA.
One Week. One Story. One Start.
From Downing Street to the Dôme de Paris, this week reads less like a schedule and more like a strategy.
This isn’t just a collection of conferences. It’s a continental shift — where Europe is aligning talent, policy and compute to lead in AI.
This is just chapter one. But the story is already racing ahead.