Jensen Huang and Arthur Mensch on Winning the Global AI Race

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a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The global race for AI leadership is no longer just about companies—it’s about nations. AI isn’t just computing infrastructure; it’s cultural infrastructure, economic strategy, and national security all rolled into one. In this episode, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, and Arthur Mensch, cofounder and CEO of Mistral, sit down to discuss sovereign AI, national AI strategies, and why every country must take ownership of its digital intelligence. How AI will reshape global economies and GDP The full AI stack—from chips to models to AI factories Why AI is both a general purpose technology and deeply specialized The open-source vs. closed AI debate and its impact on sovereignty Why no one will build AI for you—you have to do it yourself Is this the most consequential technology shift of all time? If so, the stakes have never been higher.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the greatest force of reducing the technology divide the world's ever known.
0:07.1	It will have an impact on GDP of every country in the double digits in the coming years.
0:12.9	Nobody's going to do this for you. You've got to do it yourself.
0:16.8	It's up to organizations, to enterprises, to countries, to build what they need.
0:21.6	The stakes at play are basically the equivalent of modern digital colonialization.
0:26.6	AI isn't just computing infrastructure, it's also cultural infrastructure.
0:30.6	The race for AI dominance is not only constrained to companies,
0:36.6	but is increasingly capturing the attention
0:38.8	of countries. And that includes the infrastructure spanning every layer of the stack. The chips,
0:45.6	the models, the applications, plus the energy required to run these, quote, AI factories,
0:50.6	the talent needed to produce them, and well-designed policy that helps not hinders
0:56.2	this entire ecosystem. And all of this together is turning critical.
1:01.9	Setup is always hard. This is no different. The only question is do you need to do it?
1:07.1	If you want to be part of the future, and this is the most consequential technology of all time, not just our time, of all time, digital intelligence, how much more valuable, how much more important can it be?
1:21.0	In today's episode, we explore sovereign AI and this regional race for AI infrastructure across countries big and small.
1:29.6	And there is truly no one better to discuss this than our guests, Jensen Huang and Arthur
1:34.9	Munch.
1:36.1	Jensen, of course, is the inimitable co-founder and longtime CEO of NVIDIA, a company known for its
1:42.0	constant reinvention and ability to place critical bets like the GPU or graphics processing unit that has propelled it to be one of the largest companies at over $3 trillion in market cap as of this recording.
1:55.3	Of course, the products that Nvidia makes like the GPU are also the backbone to so much of our digital world today.
2:01.9	Arthur, on the other hand, is the co-founder and CEO of Mistral, a leading AI lab that focuses
2:06.7	on customizable open-source frontier models, but also a growing number of tools to help
	...

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