Nvidia takes minority stake in France's Doctolib as part of $2B European AI push

What's the deal? Nvidia has agreed to buy a minority stake in French healthcare platform Doctolib, the company said on Tuesday. Doctolib did not disclose the size or value of the stake, but said Nvidia's presence would help it build artificial intelligence tools.

What does Doctolib do? Founded in 2013, it handles administrative work for doctors and medical staff and has become a common tool for European patients booking appointments. It is one of France's best-known startups.

Why now? The deal is part of a broader push: chief executive officer Jensen Huang said in Paris that Nvidia will announce $2 billion in European investments within a week, on top of $8 billion poured into the continent over the past year. He also named funding for three other French startups — Genesis AI, Pigment, and Entalpic.

What's the endgame? Huang is pitching open-source AI models as a cheaper, more adaptable route for Europe to close the gap with the US. "Europe needs to get in the race," he said, framing open models as key to language support and "sovereignty."

By the numbers: The sums are modest for Nvidia, worth about $5.7 trillion this month. Doctolib's own valuation has slipped: a secondary sale earlier this year, in which staff and early investors sold roughly €300 million in shares, valued it at €3.6 billion — a 38% discount to the €5.8 billion it carried after its 2022 raise.

The signal: Nvidia is steadily building a web of equity stakes in companies that run on its chips, with holdings reaching $99 billion by July, up from about $7 billion a year earlier. The Doctolib deal extends that strategy into European healthcare as Huang courts a continent weighing how fast to let AI advance.

Read more: thenextweb.com, Reuters, Bloomberg

Image credit: Generated with Gemini