Article · Money and markets · Technology
Merz asks German industry to open its data to AI, and the partner is America's Nvidia. What Berlin signed and what the document leaves out
On 19 October 2026, at an investment summit in Berlin, Germany's economy and research ministries signed a declaration of intent on industrial AI with the US chipmaker Nvidia. It is not a binding contract: no sum, no timeline and no answer on who will own the resulting models has been published. Handelsblatt, cited by Euronews, reports a nine-figure euro sum of state money, and Computerwoche, on its own information, reports "a three-digit million sum"; the government has not confirmed it. Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged companies to open industrial data to AI. The backdrop, according to Allianz Research: total investment in Germany fell 6.4 percent between 2019 and 2025, while in the US it rose 20.2 percent.
On 19 October 2026 the German government signed a document with Nvidia that contains neither a sum nor a date. At the same time the chancellor asked industry for the thing it has guarded most closely: its data. The number behind the hurry: over six years, investment in Germany fell 6.4 percent while in the US it grew 20.2 percent.