JD Vance likely to attend AI summit in France amid US-China tech war

Vance has refrained from addressing speculation regarding a potential 2028 presidential bid.

US Vice President JD Vance will travel to Europe next week for his first international trip after assuming office, according to reports.

Vance is expected to attend the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in France and the Munich Security Conference in Germany, a report by The Washington Post stated.

The AI Action Summit, which runs February 10 to 11, is set to take place at the Grand Palais in Paris. Vance’s participation in the summit comes as the race between the US and China continues over AI development amid the surge of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek last week.

Chinese startup DeepSeek's launch of its latest AI models, which it says are on a par or better than industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction of the cost, is threatening to upset the technology world order.

The company has attracted attention in global AI circles after writing in a paper last month that the training of DeepSeek-V3 required less than $6 million worth of computing power from Nvidia H800 chips.

As per reports, President Trump on Friday met with CEO of chipmaking powerhouse Nvidia and is reportedly mulling tightening chip exports to China. Trump has also announced a new project to invest up to $500 billion in building the infrastructure needed for AI.

Meanwhile, Vance has refrained from addressing speculation regarding a potential 2028 presidential bid. In an interview with Fox News, Vance responded to questions about his ambitions by emphasising the importance of focusing on the current term.

"I'd say that we've not thought a lot about politics in the last six months," Vance said when asked about his future plans. "We'll see what happens come 2028," he said.

According to Vance, his priority was to deliver on the responsibilities of his current position. "The best thing for my future is actually the best thing for the American people, which is that we do a really good job over the next three and a half years," he told Fox News.