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Germany signed a joint AI declaration with Nvidia as Merz and Huang outlined industrial AI plans and new startup investments in Berlin.
Germany moved to deepen its industrial AI push on Monday as Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang discussed how the country can apply artificial intelligence to manufacturing, automotive production and smaller industrial firms, according to a Nvidia blog post published on 2026-10-19. The same day, German ministries signed a Joint Declaration of Intent with Nvidia to work on a joint initiative aimed at physical AI models and a wider industrial AI ecosystem in Europe.
Joint declaration and policy backdrop
In Berlin, at the Invest in Germany Summit and during a conversation at Kraftwerk, the former power station venue, Merz said Germany wanted to be “one of the most advanced places in the world” for integrating AI into industry, while Huang argued that AI would augment, rather than replace, German engineering capability, according to Nvidia’s account of the discussion on 2026-10-19. The declaration was signed by Merz, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space, with the stated aim of formally expanding cooperation with Germany’s federal government and its Industry 4.0 Platform.
That policy direction builds on earlier German industrial AI work. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy said on 2026-07-03 that it had refocused Plattform Industrie 4.0 toward industrial AI, and the German federal government said on 2026-04-20 that it was seeking sovereign access across the industrial AI value chain. Germany’s national AI strategy originated in 2018 and emphasized commercialization, industrial competitiveness, data infrastructure, workforce skills and responsible AI; a December 2020 update raised planned federal AI spending to EUR 5 billion by 2025, according to the background material supplied.
Startup investments and industrial use cases
Huang also announced planned investments in four German startups: Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo and Reflex Aerospace, according to Nvidia’s post. Nvidia described Agile Robots as a Munich-based robotics company working on AI-powered robots for manufacturing, logistics and healthcare; Avelios Medical as a Munich-based healthcare technology company developing an AI-native hospital information system; Mirelo as a German startup building AI models for sound effects, speech and music generation for video; and Reflex Aerospace as a Berlin-based space scaleup designing satellites that it says can be ready for launch in about 12 months instead of years.
The post also said Nvidia has previously supported German companies including n8n, Neura Robotics and Black Forest Labs, and it described the new commitments as part of a nearly $10 billion pledge to support companies, universities and research institutions across Europe. The material did not specify the timing or structure of each investment beyond saying they were planned.
Siemens partnership and quantum simulation
Nvidia said Siemens announced a partnership with it to advance AI-driven autonomous factories, with Siemens showing AI tools at its Erlangen factory. The post said fully virtual production ramp-up can reduce engineering effort by up to 85%, while agent-based production planning can improve manufacturing flexibility and reduce costs by up to 20%. These figures were presented as company claims in the source material.
The Nvidia post also said researchers used JUPITER, described as Europe’s largest supercomputer at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, to run a 104-qubit simulation of a fault-tolerant quantum computer, which it called the largest and most detailed simulation of its kind to date. No independent verification or additional technical details were provided in the supplied material.
Related recent coverage cited in the enrichment notes included an Associated Press report on 2026-10-19 saying Huang urged German manufacturers to seize the AI moment. No further catalyst date was supplied beyond that coverage and the Berlin summit events described above.
