--- title: Merz and Huang discuss industrial AI in Germany as... description: At the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discussed industrial AI, with the German government signing a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/merz-and-huang-discuss-industrial-ai-in-germany-as-nvidia-signs-a-declaration-of-intent-and-names-ne-uqhwrvga1 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Merz and Huang discuss industrial AI in Germany as NVIDIA signs a declaration of intent and names new startup investments | daily.dev og:description: At the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discussed industrial AI, with the German government signing a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/merz-and-huang-discuss-industrial-ai-in-germany-as-nvidia-signs-a-declaration-of-intent-and-names-ne-uqhwrvga1 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/UqhwRvgA1.png og:image:alt: Merz and Huang discuss industrial AI in Germany as NVIDIA signs a declaration of intent and names new startup investments og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Merz and Huang discuss industrial AI in Germany as NVIDIA signs a declaration of intent and names new startup investments **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 3 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary At the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discussed industrial AI, with the German government signing a Joint Declaration of Intent with NVIDIA focused on the Mittelstand. NVIDIA announced planned investments in four German startups (Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo, Reflex Aerospace) as part of a nearly $10 billion European commitment, while Siemens separately announced an AI-driven autonomous factories partnership with NVIDIA, claiming up to 85% less engineering effort and 20% cost savings. NVIDIA also ran a 104-qubit fault-tolerant quantum simulation on the JUPITER supercomputer, calling it a record. On regulation, Huang told Merz that technology must come before rules: industry must first build safety technology, then best practices, then government regulation should target applications rather than the underlying technology. ## Content At the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, the German federal government signed a Joint Declaration of Intent with Nvidia to advance physical AI and push industrial AI into wider use. Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang were both present. The emphasis is on the Mittelstand, Germany's small and medium businesses. ## What Nvidia announced Nvidia plans to develop physical AI for robots, machines and cars. It also plans investments in four German startups: Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo and Reflex Aerospace. These are part of a nearly $10 billion European commitment. Siemens announced its own partnership with Nvidia on AI-driven autonomous factories, starting at its Erlangen plant. Siemens claims up to 85% less engineering effort for virtual production ramp-up, and up to 20% cost savings from agent-based production planning. Those are company figures, and I'd want to see them in a real plant before taking them at face value. The backdrop is a business coalition including Siemens and Deutsche Bank. It projects up to €4.1 trillion in potential investment in Germany by 2035 across AI, energy and defence. ## Merz asks about regulation Merz asked Huang how Europe should regulate AI. Huang's answer was that you can't regulate if there's no technology. He laid out three layers: the industry has to invent the technology for safety ("Safety is not hopes and dreams. Safety is technology and engineering"), companies need best practices, and then come industrial and government regulations. He argued that regulating the internet is hard but regulating internet applications is not, and that applications are where regulation should start. "There's nothing to regulate if the industry doesn't thrive," he said, adding that Germany should want its AI industry to thrive and be safe. If necessary, he said, "we'll make sure we regulate." It's a tidy answer, and it's also what you'd expect from the CEO of a company selling the hardware. Worth noting who is advising the government here. ## A quantum simulation on JUPITER Separately, Nvidia ran a record-scale simulation of a 104-qubit fault-tolerant quantum processor on JUPITER, Europe's exascale supercomputer at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. It used 8,192 GPUs. The run validated magic-state cultivation, an approach that could cut the qubits needed to produce magic states by 90% compared with earlier methods. Researchers first prototyped the methods on a smaller Nvidia GB200 NVL72 system, then scaled up to JUPITER, using Nvidia cuQuantum and CUDA-Q software. The point is to let researchers evaluate quantum processor designs computationally before building physical hardware. That should speed progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computing for uses like drug discovery and materials science. ## Questions this post answers ### What did NVIDIA announce for German startups at the Invest in Germany Summit NVIDIA announced planned investments in four German startups: Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo, and Reflex Aerospace. These investments are part of a broader European commitment of nearly $10 billion, announced alongside a Joint Declaration of Intent signed with the German federal government to advance physical and industrial AI, with a focus on the Mittelstand. _daily.dev keeps builders evaluating AI investment and partnership trends across the European tech landscape._ ### What did Jensen Huang say about how governments should regulate AI Huang argued regulation should follow technology, not precede it, telling Chancellor Merz that "you can't regulate if there's no technology." He described three layers: industry must first invent safety technology, then establish best practices, and only then should industrial and government regulation follow, starting with applications rather than the underlying technology itself. _daily.dev helps developers follow how AI regulation debates shape the tools they'll build with tomorrow._ ### What results did Siemens report from its AI partnership with NVIDIA at the Erlangen plant Siemens reported up to 85% less engineering effort for virtual production ramp-up and up to 20% cost savings from agent-based production planning, as part of a partnership with NVIDIA on AI-driven autonomous factories starting at its Erlangen plant. _daily.dev surfaces real-world industrial AI results for engineers weighing automation partnerships._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 49 comments across x (as of 2026-10-20). **TL;DR:** Reactions focus heavily on the optics of Merz being 'lectured' by Huang and whether Europe is behind or merely underappreciated, with a side debate over Europe's actual contribution to the chip supply chain. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 25% mixed · 60% skeptical **The case for** - Several point out Europe supplies critical foundational technology (ASML, Zeiss, imec) without which chips couldn't be made. - Some found Huang's 'safety is technology, not hopes and dreams' line a sharp, credible engineering take. **The pushback** - Many felt Merz looked weak or out of his depth, calling the exchange a 'lecture' rather than a deal between equals. - Several argue Europe is fragmented, over-regulated, and not producing competitive AI models or innovation compared to the US and China. - Some are skeptical that asking a chip vendor how to regulate AI is a sound approach, comparing it to asking shovel-sellers how to regulate a gold rush. **By community** - x (heated): Replies split into a sharp back-and-forth over whether Europe's chip-supply-chain contributions (ASML, Zeiss, imec) offset perceptions that Merz was lectured and Europe is falling behind in AI. **Hottest debate:** Whether Europe's role in the chip supply chain (ASML, Zeiss, imec) proves it's foundational to AI, or whether that's overshadowed by its regulatory caution and lack of competitive AI models. **Open questions** - Is self-regulation proposed by industry leaders like Huang actually workable, or does it just serve incumbents? - Can Europe's foundational hardware contributions translate into competitive AI model development? **Highlights** > @Thums1977 @moss_here @Hesamation Europe is made of sovereign nations, not a monolithic federal state like the US or China, if and when the EU federalizes, it’s a completely different ballgame. Europe specializes in hard tech and foundational bottlenecks, provide the atomic-level physics without which TSMC > — [whitepigeon66 on x · 4 points, 1 comments](https://x.com/whitepigeon66/status/2112474855949934894) > @whitepigeon66 @moss_here @Hesamation I don’t disagree ASML’s importance within the AI ecosystem. If Europe federalizes? Perhaps, they are down that path. That’s an IF. Right now, EU is just a piece on the assembly line. They aren’t innovating due to their regulatory environment. What is coming out of Spain? Italy? > — [Thums1977 on x · 1 points, 1 comments](https://x.com/Thums1977/status/2112480637718351926) > @Thums1977 @moss_here @Hesamation Not even American giants do things end-to-end. Nvidia designs chips, but doesn't own a single fab. At the same time, the power chips and sensors without which Tesla motors or Apple phones cannot run come straight from Italy fabs at STMicroelectronics, while Spain leads the > — [whitepigeon66 on x · 3 points, 1 comments](https://x.com/whitepigeon66/status/2112485236604899764) > @Hesamation In den Nachrichten (@SWR1 )wird es so dargestellt, als wenn Merz mit NVIDIA auf Augenhöhe einen Deal vereinbart hätte. In Wirklichkeit hält der Chef von NVIDIA dem Kanzler ein Referat über Technologien und die Möglichkeiten, die Deutschland gerade verpasst. Und der Kanzler > — [Odysseus2123 on x · 2 points](https://x.com/Odysseus2123/status/2112401320887959866) > @Hesamation asking the guy who sells the shovels how to regulate the gold rush, the answer was always gonna be more shovels > — [odozsantos on x](https://x.com/odozsantos/status/2112283513290412290) **Source threads** - [x](https://x.com/Hesamation/status/2112269991542178218) · 1 points · 49 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Germany to announce AI partnership with Nvidia next week, sources say](https://daily.dev/posts/germany-to-announce-ai-partnership-with-nvidia-next-week-sources-say-rsddium26) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Nvidia, Deutsche Telekom strike €1B partnership for a data center in Munich](https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-deutsche-telekom-strike-1b-partnership-for-a-data-center-in-munich-hlg0z4xtm) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Deutsche Telekom and NVIDIA Launch Industrial AI Cloud — a ‘New Era’ for Germany’s Industrial Transformation](https://daily.dev/posts/deutsche-telekom-and-nvidia-launch-industrial-ai-cloud-a-new-era-for-germany-s-industrial-transf-oef6d151g) · NVIDIA · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Nvidia plans $2B in European AI deals in the next week](https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-plans-2b-in-european-ai-deals-in-the-next-week-eby9ddc2x) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#nvidia](https://daily.dev/tags/nvidia), [#quantum-computing](https://daily.dev/tags/quantum-computing), [#ai-regulation](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-regulation) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/merz-and-huang-discuss-industrial-ai-in-germany-as-nvidia-signs-a-declaration-of-intent-and-names-ne-uqhwrvga1) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Merz and Huang discuss industrial AI in Germany as NVIDIA signs a declaration of intent and names new startup investments","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/merz-and-huang-discuss-industrial-ai-in-germany-as-nvidia-signs-a-declaration-of-intent-and-names-ne-uqhwrvga1","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/merz-and-huang-discuss-industrial-ai-in-germany-as-nvidia-signs-a-declaration-of-intent-and-names-ne-uqhwrvga1"},"datePublished":"2026-10-19T20:38:02.692Z","dateModified":"2026-10-20T10:24:18.298Z","description":"At the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discussed industrial AI, with the German government signing a...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/fc9f383cf95ad7632185fa2e5bc55a4c?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/fc9f383cf95ad7632185fa2e5bc55a4c?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/merz-and-huang-discuss-industrial-ai-in-germany-as-nvidia-signs-a-declaration-of-intent-and-names-ne-uqhwrvga1","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"nvidia,quantum-computing,ai-regulation","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Merz and Huang discuss industrial AI in Germany as NVIDIA signs a declaration of intent and names new startup investments"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/merz-and-huang-discuss-industrial-ai-in-germany-as-nvidia-signs-a-declaration-of-intent-and-names-ne-uqhwrvga1#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What did NVIDIA announce for German startups at the Invest in Germany Summit","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"NVIDIA announced planned investments in four German startups: Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo, and Reflex Aerospace. 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