By Andreas Rinke and Hakan Ersen BERLIN (Reuters) -Deutsche Telekom will join forces with Nvidia to establish an artificial intelligence cloud for European manufacturers in Germany, the companies said on Friday. Nvidia will supply 10,000 chips, or graphics processing units (GPUs), to be built into Deutsche Telekom’s existing data centres. The cloud, which the companies […]
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Deutsche Telekom, Nvidia join forces on manufacturers’ AI cloud in Germany
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By Andreas Rinke and Hakan Ersen
BERLIN (Reuters) -Deutsche Telekom will join forces with Nvidia to establish an artificial intelligence cloud for European manufacturers in Germany, the companies said on Friday.
Nvidia will supply 10,000 chips, or graphics processing units (GPUs), to be built into Deutsche Telekom’s existing data centres.
The cloud, which the companies aim to implement by 2026, is seen as an important stepping stone towards the construction of large-scale data centres, a crucial part of the new German government’s drive to modernise the country’s lagging industry and part of EU efforts to catch up with other world powers on AI.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled on Wednesday the U.S. company’s plans to build an AI cloud platform in Germany. Deutsche Telekom’s involvement was announced on Friday as Huang also met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“Investments in strategic AI infrastructures are central to our country’s innovative strength,” Merz said in a statement following the meeting.
“We expressly welcome the commitment of Nvidia and its partners. This cooperation can be an important step for Germany’s digital sovereignty and economic future,” he added.
GPUs have emerged as an important component in the ramp-up of AI.
Under Merz, Germany plans to promote the construction of large data centres to accommodate the shift towards AI in the coming years, aiming to secure up to 100,000 GPUs with a 35% state subsidy.
“But that means that the industry has to take over 65%,” said Thomas Jarzombek, the government’s junior minister for digital affairs.
In February, the European Commission unveiled plans to provide $20 billion in funding to construct AI data centres to catch up with the U.S. and China.
Deutsche Telekom announced last month that it has teamed up with tech giant SAP, web hosting firm Ionos and unlisted retailer Schwarz to seek European Union support to build such a centre in Germany.
Nvidia is also partnering with European AI champion Mistral to create AI computing that runs on 18,000 of the latest Nvidia chips for European businesses.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Hakan Ersen in Frankfurt, writing by Rachel More, editing by Friederike Heine and Susan Fenton)