Germany not left behind: government strikes AI deal with Nvidia

Published on 20/10/2026 - 20:10 GMT+2•Updated 20:36

Shortly before the investment summit in Berlin, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang gave Germany a slap in the face. He said it was deeply painful to see how far this once economically advanced country had fallen behind. And the 63-year-old CEO of the world's most valuable company offered what he sees as left-behind Germany some advice: "Just get to work!" ("Macht euch einfach an die Arbeit!")

Yet Jensen Huang apparently still believes in Germany, because during a fireside chat with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a key AI deal was agreed, according to media reports. As first reported by Handelsblatt, the federal government plans to contribute a sum in the hundreds of millions of euros to the partnership.

The combination of German engineering and state-of-the-art AI technology is intended to give Germany a lasting economic boost, Merz and Huang stressed.

Amazon to invest 16 billion euros in Germany

Another US corporation, internet giant Amazon, plans to invest around 16 billion euros in Germany in 2027, as was also announced at the investment summit in Berlin. One third of the money is to go into expanding data centres for Amazon's cloud provider AWS.

According to Amazon, around 3,000 employees are already working in Germany for its cloud services subsidiary AWS. The planned 4.8 billion euros for AWS in Germany will be invested primarily in the Frankfurt am Main region.

Companies urged to make their data available to AI

Nvidia says it invested almost one billion dollars in Germany in 2025. The US company headquartered in California holds stakes in numerous German start-ups and companies. Huang repeatedly stresses that data must be seen as a national resource that should not be exported, but used to build a "national intelligence".

Around a dozen German companies are expected to take part in the project with Nvidia that is being funded by the federal government, including Siemens, Audi and AI start-up Black Forest Labs from Freiburg im Breisgau. Nvidia is already working with Siemens in Erlangen on equipment production.

Chancellor Merz called on companies in Germany to open up their industrial data for artificial intelligence, in order to safeguard the competitiveness of sectors such as the car industry. Preserving Germany's industrial base is a decisive advantage over other economies, the CDU leader said.

Whether Friedrich Merz also managed to convince leather-jacket fan Jensen Huang with his declarations about genuine German virtues is another question.

In Berlin the chancellor actually said: "Germans are considered hardworking, they go to bed early and get up before sunrise. (...) On holiday we are the first on the beach and spread out our towels before breakfast. And when we agree delivery dates, we stick to them."

Recently, the outlook for the German economy has brightened slightly. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) now expects growth of 1.3 per cent in Germany in 2026, after previously forecasting only 0.7 per cent. Whether the recovery will gather pace thanks to the investments by US tech giants remains to be seen.