Nvidia shares gained 2.14% to $209.02 Thursday as the chip maker looked to highlight the growth of its hardware in Europe.

The stock is up 9.8% year to date through Wednesday's close, and up 41% over the past 12 months. Nvidia was a recent Barron's stock pick when shares were trading at around $226.

While most of Nvidia's business is with huge U.S. technology companies, the company is hoping European customers will also spend big on its hardware. It is taking advantage of the VivaTech conference in Paris this week to highlight Europe as a market for its artificial-intelligence chips.

"AI infrastructure is coming online. AI agents are running in production, start-ups are deploying applications and the French AI ecosystem is developing models, data sets and platforms designed around local languages, cultural context and European requirements," Nvidia wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

The big hope is French AI start-up Mistral, which recently raised $830 million in debt financing to spend on its plans to build 200 megawatts of AI computing capacity across Europe by 2027. Nvidia has invested in Mistral.

Mistral's spending isn't impressive by the scale of U.S. companies -- Alphabet's Google recently said it plans to issue $80 billion in equity to fund its own AI investment -- but it might only be the start. Mistral and Nvidia are also part of a consortium to build a 1.4 gigawatt data center campus near Paris which would rival the largest current American facilities.

The debate over European and global access to leading AI has intensified after the Trump administration banned foreign use of two models from start-up Anthropic last week.

"We won't buy any models made by these [American AI] companies if overnight, you can just flip the switch," French President Emmanuel Macron said in remarks at the G-7 conference this week.

Nvidia looks like it's ready to step in to help fill the gap.