By Kirsten Ripper & Euronews with AP
Published on •Updated
Shortly before the investment summit in Berlin, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang delivered a sharp slap in the face to Germany. He said it pains him to see how far this economically advanced country has fallen behind. And the 63-year-old CEO of the world's most valuable company gave what he sees as left-behind Germany some blunt advice: "Just get to work!" ("Just get on with your work!")
Yet Jensen Huang evidently still believes in Germany, because at a fireside chat with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a crucial AI deal was agreed, according to media reports. As first reported by Handelsblatt, the federal government intends to contribute a nine-figure sum in euros to the cooperation.
The combination of German engineering expertise and cutting-edge AI technology is expected to give Germany's economic base lasting strength, Merz and Huang stressed.
In total, the chancellor said, the investment summit in Berlin produced commitments worth 800 billion euros up to 2028. Some 200 company bosses gathered for the meeting.
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. A third of the money is to be channelled into expanding data centres for Amazon's cloud provider AWS.
According to Amazon, around 3,000 employees already work 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 area.
Businesses urged to make their data available to AI
Nvidia says it invested almost a billion dollars in Germany in 2025. The US corporation, headquartered in California, holds stakes in numerous German start-ups and companies. Huang repeatedly stresses that data must be seen as a national resource, which 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, which is being supported 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 device production.
Chancellor Merz called on companies in Germany to open up their industrial data to artificial intelligence, in order to safeguard the competitiveness of sectors such as the car industry. Maintaining Germany's industrial base is, the CDU leader argued, a crucial advantage over other economies.
Did Friedrich Merz manage to convince leather-jacket fan Jensen Huang with his comments about traditional German virtues?
In Berlin the chancellor actually declared: "Germans are considered hard-working, go to bed early and get up before sunrise. (...) On holiday we are the first on the beach and lay out our towels even before breakfast. And when we agree on delivery dates, we stick to them."
Most recently, the outlook for the German economy has brightened somewhat. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) now expects growth of 1.3 percent in Germany in 2026, after previously forecasting just 0.7 percent. Whether a further upswing will materialise thanks to investments by US tech giants remains to be seen.