EU needs only ‘very trusted partners’ on AI chips, tech chief says amid Nvidia crisis

LISBON — The European Union should work “only with very trusted partners” on artificial intelligence microchips, its tech chief said Tuesday, just days after revelations of a spy scandal rocked industry leader Nvidia.

“When we speak about very critical technologies, like AI semiconductors and quantum technologies, cybersecurity, satellites … it’s very important that we are working very closely only with very trusted partners,” said Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty. She made the comments in an interview with POLITICO at the Web Summit tech fair in Lisbon, when asked about Europe’s reliance on Nvidia.

It is Virkkunen’s first public comment since Nvidia opened an internal investigation into whether its CEO was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation. Top executive Jensen Huang admitted to an affair following a reported relationship with an executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed whom the U.S. government believes is a Chinese spy.

Virkkunen did not detail whether she considered Nvidia less trustworthy since news of the spy scandal broke. When asked who she considers trusted partners, she described the U.S. as the EU’s traditionally “closest partner when it comes to security and technology,” suggesting the bloc has no intention of blaming the U.S. but would prefer to collaborate to plug the security gap.

In “limited areas of technologies,” it is important to ensure that “we don’t have that kind of technological leakages,” the EU tech chief said. “We want to really keep the business secrets in Europe.”

Europe is heavily reliant on Nvidia chips, since it has little production or design capacity for AI chips of its own — something that the EU aims to correct for through an industrial policy push into chipmaking called the European Chips Act.

“It’s true that currently Europe is very dependent on AI chips on a few American companies and that’s why it’s important also that we are building up our own capacity to also design and also manufacture more advanced [chips] and also AI chips in the coming years,” Virkkunen said.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.