The pair will revamp an existing data centre in Munich and fill it with up to 10,000 of Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs. When it fires up early next year, Deutsche Telekom reckons the facility will boost Germany’s AI computing power by about 50 per cent.
Deutsche Telekom said several firms, including Perplexity, have already lined up to use the new factory’s processing grunt. The plan involves laying dozens of miles of fibre optic cable to keep the GPUs fed and humming.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang could hardly contain his excitement, saying: “We’re bringing Nvidia AI and robotics to start a new era of Germany’s industrial transformation.”
Although the project sits outside the European Union’s own plans for AI gigafactories, those monster facilities expected to run 100,000 of the latest chips, it still looks like a tidy win for Brussels, which is desperate to close the technology gap with the US.
Since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT in late 2022, the industry has been in an arms race of spending on AI data centres. While US companies have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the sector, Europe’s efforts have looked a bit like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight.
Earlier this year, Washington unveiled its Stargate AI venture, a $100 billion plan involving OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and UAE-based MGX to build US-based supercomputing hubs.
Meanwhile, Nvidia and Troubled Chipzilla have agreed to jointly develop products for data centres and PCs, while OpenAI cut a multibillion-dollar deal with AMD to help power future AI systems. The ChatGPT maker inked a $300 billion contract with Oracle to buy computing capacity over five years, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The EU has promised to rally €200 billion in AI investments to avoid being left completely in the digital dust. More than 20 backers have already pledged €150 billion for AI-related projects over the next five years, and Brussels is setting aside another €20 billion to fund up to five full-scale AI gigafactories.
For now, though, it’s Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom leading the charge, proving that Europe might finally be ready to stop talking about catching up and start actually doing it.
