American billionaire Jensen Huang’s Nvidia set for AI partnership with Germany

Germany plans to announce a partnership with American billionaire Jensen Huang’s Nvidia next week to speed up the use of artificial intelligence in German industry, Reuters reported, citing government sources.

The agreement is due to be unveiled at the government’s Invest in Germany summit in Berlin, where Huang is expected as a guest. Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to meet the Nvidia chief executive at a reception at Kraftwerk Berlin on Monday evening, according to Handelsblatt, which first reported the plan on Thursday.

The deal has two goals, Handelsblatt said. The first is to build the base for physical AI, the technology used to train robots and self-driving vehicles. The second is to develop high-performance AI models for industrial use.

Germany will invest several hundred million euros, mainly to buy computing power and train AI models, while Nvidia will contribute engineering staff. Government sources told Reuters on Friday that partners beyond Nvidia will join the agreement. Siemens, Audi and AI startup Black Forest Labs are among about a dozen companies involved, according to reports.

The program will be built around SOOFI, short for Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models, a project launched in September 2025 by German research institutions, universities and AI companies to develop large AI models.

The focus on open-source models also lines up with Nvidia’s own recent moves. In August, the chipmaker agreed to buy open-source AI hub Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, according to The Information, giving it a stake in the platform where developers share and build on publicly available AI models.

Nvidia already has deep ties to German industry. Deutsche Telekom runs an industrial AI cloud in Munich with up to 10,000 Nvidia chips, and Siemens said in January it would build an industrial AI operating system with the chipmaker.

The partnership fits Europe’s push to build its own AI capacity rather than rely entirely on U.S. and Chinese technology. The German government said last month it remained committed to expanding AI capacity to strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty.

The German deal is small next to Nvidia’s sales, but it gives the company a role in one of Europe’s largest industrial economies at a time when governments are spending public money to secure their own computing power. Nvidia became the first company to pass $5 trillion in market value in October 2025, on demand for the chips that power AI systems.

The deal comes during a difficult stretch for Nvidia shares. Huang, who co-founded the company in 1993 and owns about 3% of it, saw his fortune fall below $200 billion earlier this month as the stock slid amid wider concerns about AI spending.