Germany and NVIDIA are building possibly the most ambitious European tech project of the decade: the continent’s first industrial AI cloud.
NVIDIA has been on a European tour over the past month with CEO Jensen Huang charming audiences at London Tech Week before dazzling the crowds at Paris’s VivaTech. But it was his meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that might prove the most consequential stop.
The resulting partnership between NVIDIA and Deutsche Telekom isn’t just another corporate handshake; it’s potentially a turning point for European technological sovereignty.
An “AI factory” (as they’re calling it) will be created with a focus on manufacturing, which is hardly surprising given Germany’s renowned industrial heritage. The facility aims to give European industrial players the computational firepower to revolutionise everything from design to robotics.
“In the era of AI, every manufacturer needs two factories: one for making things, and one for creating the intelligence that powers them,” said Huang. “By building Europe’s first industrial AI infrastructure, we’re enabling the region’s leading industrial companies to advance simulation-first, AI-driven manufacturing.”
It’s rare to hear such urgency from a telecoms CEO, but Deutsche Telekom’s Timotheus Höttges added: “Europe’s technological future needs a sprint, not a stroll. We must seize the opportunities of artificial intelligence now, revolutionise our industry, and secure a leading position in the global technology competition. Our economic success depends on quick decisions and collaborative innovations.”
The first phase alone will deploy 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs spread across various high-performance systems. That makes this Germany’s largest AI deployment ever; a statement the country isn’t content to watch fr