Nvidia’s France Pledges Remain Intact: Varza

0:00 It's moving so quickly, it's changing so fast, and there's so much speculation that I think it's really, it's kind of hard to see where things are going to go from here. What is that? Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of unanswered questions still that need to be answered. I'm just thinking in terms of he had this European tour and Paris was part of that tour. It was Paris, Stockholm, London, Berlin. Again, fresh announcement from Jensen when he was on the ground in Paris backing French startups. What is the what is the mood?

0:31 Have you spoken to founders who have investment from Nvidia? What are you hearing from them? Is there any sense of concern? What is the mood on that point? Yes, I've spoken to a lot of founders. It's very mixed reactions. But I would say overall there's still just such a great level of respect for Jensen, what he's built. regardless of what's happened, and I think everybody knows CEOs aren't perfect. and also, I think that there is, not too much fear, given that this comes at just after, all the investment announcements. So there is none of that's been put into jeopardy. So, for the moment, actually, the ecosystem seems relatively reassured, and I think that there's also a lot of discussion about the learnings for them as founders.

1:17 obviously Nvidia, was very tied to Jensen personally, and that's a risk for any company. and so now there's a lot of discussion around how to avoid that as they themselves build their companies. But I would say actually, given everything that's happened, how quickly it's happened, the mood is actually quite positive. And I think it is really reputational. I don't think really what Nvidia has built, is really put at risk for the moment. That's, that's really interesting in terms of the reputational aspect of it and the learnings that some of these founders are taking from from how to conduct yourself and how to build an organization around a CEO and a founder.

1:56 So to be to be clear, Roxanne, there is you're not hearing concern that some of these investment pledges are going to be pulled back. You're not hearing concern that the kind of financial support, the investment, the equity from from Nvidia is going to be reduced? No, there were there were four announcements that were four companies, that Nvidia announced investments in in France, two of them were Station F startups. One was a partner. to our knowledge, none of that is, is being pulled off the table.

2:25 So I think, honestly, that the ecosystem here for the moment seems quite reassured. And then, in any conflict, founders are always looking for where is the where's the opportunity? Where's the opportunity for Europe? and so that's, that's also part of the discussion at the moment On the opportunity piece, is there an opportunity on the sovereignty space? Is there an opportunity in building out alternatives to the Nvidia chip supply? Is there material evidence of that starting to happen in Europe?

2:54 How does this change the sovereignty conversation, if at all, the reliance, the dependency, not just on the chips, but on the entire Nvidia, the entire Nvidia stack? I mean, these are conversations that we've been having, I'd like to say, even for years, it's not something that has just come up, because of Jensen's departure. It's something that Europe has to strengthen and think about. for the moment, given his departure is so recent, I don't think this has given rise to any new, projects just yet.

3:25 But I think we'll have to look at how things play out. And it's very likely that some people, some founders, some entrepreneurs will jump on that opportunity.