The CEO of Europe's most valuable company changes his mind. "We don't need this here"

As Bloomberg notes, Klein thereby rejected the narrative promoted by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on a trip to Europe last month.

"Do we really need to build five data centers and put great chips in there? Is that what Europe needs? I doubt it," SAP CEO Christian Klein told reporters in Walldorf, Germany, on Thursday.

“Large language models that require huge amounts of energy and powerful computers to train are quickly becoming commodities,” Klein said. “DeepSeek has proven that,” he added, referring to a Chinese company that he said has outperformed leading U.S. AI developers with an open-source model at a fraction of the cost.

European companies should use AI to improve business

Instead, Klein suggested that European industries such as automotive and chemicals should look for ways to use AI to improve their operations.

Europe lags behind the United States in AI infrastructure. In the U.S., tech companies have announced a “Stargate” plan that could spend as much as $500 billion . In February, the European Union announced a program to invest €20 billion ($23 billion) in five AI gigafactories, large facilities dedicated to developing and training next-generation models .

Nvidia CEO believes Europe lacks computing power

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang came to Europe in June and said the region was being held back by a lack of computing power . He announced a series of partnerships to bolster Europe’s AI infrastructure, which will leverage thousands of Nvidia chips.

Klein, who works at SAP, a company that sells AI-based solutions for manufacturing, said it would be a waste of resources to play catch-up with countries like the U.S.

Klein previously had a different take on data centers

It is a change of heart for Klein, who told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January that Stargate was a "great role model for Europe", adding that he would "absolutely support" a European version of the project.

SAP had previously been in talks with other German companies to form an alliance for a joint AI gigafactory offering , but those plans fell through.

“SAP is not seeking to be an operator or investor,” a company spokesman said this week. Instead, the company is now exploring how it could serve “as a technology and software provider for potential future AI gigafactory projects.”