Germany’s economy ministry signed a memorandum of understanding with Nvidia at the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, opened on Monday by Chancellor Friedrich Merz with chief executive Jensen Huang in the room.
Neither side published terms. Nvidia’s own summary said Merz and two ministries joined a plan to build physical AI, meaning models that drive robots, machines and cars rather than chat windows.
Four startups and a factory deal
Nvidia named the four German startups it intends to back: Agile Robots, which builds arms through to the Agile ONE humanoid for factories, logistics and healthcare; Avelios Medical, which puts AI at the centre of a hospital information system; Mirelo, which generates audio matched to video; and Berlin-based Reflex Aerospace, which designs satellites it says can be launch-ready in about a year.
Siemens and Nvidia also agreed to cooperate on AI-run factories. The commitments sit inside a roughly $10B European programme spanning companies, universities and research institutes.
The policy behind the handshake
Merz told the room that AI is reshaping the German economy and that cooperation with the chipmaker matters to the country’s future. He is under pressure to lift a flagging industrial base, and Berlin has been assembling a sovereignty agenda in parallel, with Amazon pledging EUR 16B for Germany the same week.
Software is where the leverage sits. Physical AI needs simulation, training and a developer stack before it needs silicon, and the country that hosts the stack hosts the industry built on it. Germany is buying a place in that stack rather than a fab.
