Germany is preparing to announce a state-backed cooperation agreement with Nvidia and about a dozen domestic AI labs, with public funding expected to reach several hundred million euros. Handelsblatt first reported the plan, and German government sources confirmed that the announcement is scheduled for next week’s Invest in Germany summit in Berlin.
The initiative has two main goals. It aims to support physical AI—computing used to train robots and autonomous vehicles—and to build industrial AI models capable of competing with international rivals. The funding is meant to cover computing capacity and model training. Companies including Siemens, Audi and Black Forest Labs are expected to participate, while Nvidia will contribute engineers to the project.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is set to arrive in Berlin on October 19 for a reception hosted by Chancellor Friedrich Merz at Kraftwerk Berlin. A private meeting is planned, followed by a joint meeting with Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius.
The partnership builds on Germany’s Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models initiative, or SOOFI, created in September 2025 with €20 million from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. SOOFI’s first model was trained on Deutsche Telekom’s Industrial AI Cloud, an Nvidia-based platform formed under a €1 billion partnership announced in November 2025. The Munich facility is designed to operate around 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, use more than 1,000 DGX B200 systems, deliver 0.5 exaflops of compute, and increase Germany’s AI computing capacity by roughly 50%.
Meanwhile, Nvidia shares closed at $217.23 on October 15, down about 9.2% from their October 5 record close of $239.11. The iShares Semiconductor ETF lost approximately 12.7% over eight consecutive sessions, its longest losing streak since 2015, even as Nvidia’s latest quarterly revenue reached $96.2 billion, up 106% year over year, with Data Center revenue of $89 billion.
Huang has also been touring Europe’s largest economies, meeting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris after backing four French startups and committing an additional $2 billion in European AI investment on top of an earlier $8 billion.
