By Marleen Kaesebier, Maria Rugamer and Leo Marchandon
(Reuters) -Deutsche Telekom and Nvidia are launching an AI cloud for industrial applications in a 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) partnership that is set to go live in the first quarter of 2026, the German group said on Tuesday.
The cloud will operate from a refurbished Munich data centre housing up to 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs), with SAP providing the software stack for the cloud, Deutsche Telekom said.
Companies will be able to book computing power as needed to develop industrial AI applications, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges told a press conference. The cloud will also serve public services and defence sectors, he added.
“We’ve taken more than 100 companies on board … (and) investments to the tune of 750 billion (euros) have been promised,” said German Minister for Digital Transformation Karsten Wilderberger, who also took part in the conference, referring to the government’s “Made for Germany” initiative aimed at boosting growth in the country.
“If we learn that the industry, the public services are using this infrastructure, Deutsche Telekom is willing to double down on these investments,” Hoettges added.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the artificial intelligence giant was also willing to invest more in the country.
Deutsche Telekom said the cloud would be used to develop AI-powered robots to automate factories and train large language models.
Agile Robots, a Germany-based company whose robots are already being used to build the Munich data centre, is among the early adopters of the service, its CEO Zhaopeng Chen told the conference.
Another early user, German drone maker Quantum Systems told reporters it would use the cloud to develop air- and sea-based drones for surveillance and military purposes.
($1 = 0.8575 euros)
(Reporting by Leo Marchandon, Marleen Kaesebier and Maria Rugamer in Gdansk; editing by Matthias Williams and Milla Nissi-Prussak)
