'Applied AI' set to dominate France's Vivatech trade fair

Drawing high-powered tech CEOs and a presidential visit, Paris's Vivatech trade fair opening on Wednesday will spotlight hoped-for economic benefits from AI.

The top attraction on the opening day of this year's four-day show will be Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, looking to make a mark in Europe for the company that builds the most computing hardware for artificial intelligence.

President Emmanuel Macron, a regular at Vivatech, will also attend the event at the southern Paris convention centre, the Elysee Palace said, with a walking tour and chats with "French Tech" startups on the agenda.

Tech watchers expect more products than ever embedding AI into everyday life to be shown off in the exhibition halls.

"What's changed from previous years is that we've moved from AI as science fiction to applied AI," Vivatech managing director Francois Bitouzet told AFP.

He trailed around 30 sectors with concrete AI-powered products on show, from luxury to insurance, health, energy, cars, logistics and more.

Around 14,000 startups and more than 3,000 investors are expected to travel to Paris from around the world, while organisers forecast total visitor numbers to at least equal last year's 165,000 people.

Nvidia headlining

Nvidia's Huang -- likely sporting his trademark leather jacket -- has top billing with an opening presentation slated to last more than an hour.

Bitouzet said it was a "source of pride" to bring aboard semiconductor heavyweight Nvidia, whose high-powered GPUs (graphics processing units) are widely used to power the latest generative AI models.

"It proves that the European market in general and the French market in particular are attractive and that today (Nvidia) has ambitions for this market," the Vivatech boss added.

EY's European tech, media and telecoms chief Cedric Foray predicted that "there will definitely be announcements targeted at Europe" from Nvidia.

The US firm has seen export restrictions slapped on its top-performing chips by both the Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations, with US politicians leery of ceding their country's lead in generative AI.

Huang has warned that China is nevertheless making swift strides to catch up.

There was little sign of impact from export restrictions on Nvidia's chip sales in its May earnings release.

But the company has warned the braking effect may be larger in the current quarter.

Tech sovereignty

US politics preoccupies many European tech leaders and policymakers too.

Concerns range from Trump's mercurial tariff policy to the continent's ability to stand on its own without US giants -- and the massive gap in funding for AI development between the two sides of the Atlantic.

"Sovereignty, which wasn't as important in the conversation just a year or two years ago, has become an absolutely strategic priority," Bitouzet said.

Macron is expected to again emphasise "European technological sovereignty", the Elysee said.

Such remarks from the president would build on his hyping of French and European openness to AI at a Paris global summit in February.

Top French firms at Vivatech -- where around half the exhibitors are local companies -- will include Mistral AI, a French competitor to much-bigger OpenAI.

Mistral's founder Arthur Mensch is set to discuss AI with Macron and Huang at a roundtable at the end of the first day of the event.

Source: AFP