Germany and Nvidia sign an industrial AI declaration

At the Invest in Germany summit in Berlin on 19-20 October, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the economy ministry and the research ministry signed a joint declaration of intent with Nvidia on industrial physical AI models. Merz urged businesses to "open your doors for AI".

About a dozen firms are expected to join, including Siemens, Audi and Black Forest Labs. Handelsblatt reports the government plans a three-digit million-euro sum, mostly for compute; the contract and amount are not yet public. Jensen Huang announced planned investments in Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo and Reflex Aerospace, part of Nvidia's nearly $10 billion European commitment.

Physical AI covers models that understand and interact with real objects, machines and processes: robot arms, digital twins of production lines, simulation-tested designs. A digital twin is a virtual replica where changes are tried first.

Competing with US firms on general-purpose language models is hard, but owning industrial data is an advantage. Germany is putting it at the centre of a sovereign AI strategy, building on an earlier Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom AI factory. Contract details and investment sizes are still to come.

The four startups span physical AI: Agile Robots builds industrial robot arms and software, Avelios Medical makes hospital software, Mirelo works on AI for audio and video, and Reflex Aerospace builds satellites. By backing them, Nvidia grows an ecosystem built on its chips and software platform, tying national hardware choices to it over the long term. For Germany, the bet is that decades of manufacturing data and engineering knowledge can become an advantage that general-purpose model makers cannot easily copy.

• Collect production data in one place now.
• Start with a small digital twin of one line or warehouse.
• Watch German customers for AI-ready data and process requirements.