Just ahead of the investment summit in Berlin, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang delivered a slap in the face to Germany. He said it pained him to see how far this economically advanced country had fallen behind. And the 63-year-old chief executive of the world's most valuable company offered what he sees as a lagging Germany one piece of advice: "Just get to work!" (literally: "Just get down to work!")
Yet Huang clearly still believes in Germany, because according to media reports a key AI deal was struck during a fireside chat with Chancellor Friedrich Merz. As first reported by Handelsblatt, the federal government plans to contribute a nine-figure sum in euros to the partnership.
They stressed that combining German engineering expertise with cutting-edge AI technology is intended to give Germany a lasting boost as a business location.
In total, the chancellor said the Berlin investment summit produced commitments worth 800 billion euros up to 2028.
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Another US company, 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 be used to expand data centres for Amazon's cloud provider AWS.
Amazon says around 3,000 employees are already working for its cloud services subsidiary AWS in Germany. The planned 4.8 billion euros for AWS in Germany will be invested mainly in the Frankfurt am Main region.
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According to its own figures, Nvidia invested almost one billion dollars in Germany in 2025. The US group, 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 develop a "national intelligence".
Around a dozen German companies are expected to take part in the Nvidia project backed 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 for artificial intelligence, to safeguard the competitiveness of sectors such as the car industry. Maintaining Germany's industrial base, the CDU leader said, is a decisive advantage compared with other economies.
Whether Friedrich Merz managed to convince leather-jacket fan Jensen Huang with his paeans to supposedly quintessential German virtues is another matter.
In Berlin the chancellor actually said: "Germans are considered hard-working, they go to bed early and get up again before sunrise. (...) On holiday we are the first on the beach and put down our towels before breakfast. And when we agree delivery deadlines, we keep to them."
Recently the outlook for the German economy has brightened slightly. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) now expects growth of 1.3 percent in Germany in 2026, having previously forecast only 0.7 percent. Whether further recovery will be achieved thanks to investments by US tech giants remains to be seen.
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