Sales show for Germany: Chancellor seeks investors

Investment show for Germany: Chancellor appeals to investors October 20, 2026 Typical German? Long queues at security checkpoints for entry to the first investment summit of the federal government in Berlin. Some ladies in costume jackets and gentlemen in ties, who otherwise lead companies abroad, appear impatient. Time is money. First jokes are told that the organized slowness reveals a lot about Germany. "In China, it would go faster," says a younger man in a dark blue suit smilingly. The queue at the entrance is so long that the host, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has to wait until all 200 invited business leaders arrive in the hall. Inside the large hall of the former East German State Council building, which is now a private business university, the host strives to gloss over the small hitch with delays. Appealing for Optimism The Chancellor speaks of the clichés about Germans, their diligence, punctuality, reliability, their habit of booking vacation hotels very early in the morning with towels. "Some clichés tend to be true," says Friedrich Merz at the podium and adds that these qualities would help Germany cope with great challenges. Germany is financially stable, the Chancellor claims. After all, the country has a solid AAA rating from the major rating agencies as one of the leading industrial nations in the G7. "Germany has a strong industrial base and is politically stable," the Chancellor claims. The country is embedded in the European Union as an anchor with its unique internal market. 500 billion will be invested in infrastructure and 150 billion each year in defense in the coming years. This is an enormous opportunity for investors, Friedrich Merz, who previously managed the US investor BlackRock in Germany. Barriers to investment should be removed, administration should be faster and more digital, and energy should become cheaper. The head of the largest German banking group, which serves many investors, believes that Germans should be more optimistic. "In Germany we often talk about problems," said Christian Sewing, Chairman of the Management Board of Deutsche Bank. "But we talk much less about the opportunities and the diverse potentials. When I speak with investors in North America, Asia, and the Middle East, a big difference strikes me. Many look to Germany with more confidence than we do ourselves." Foreign investors often see the opportunities better than German entrepreneurs, says the head of Deutsche Bank. Nvidia CEO promises close cooperation One of these investors is Jensen Huang, CEO of the world's most valuable company, Nvidia. He offered the Chancellor, casually dressed in a leather jacket, a partnership with his company, which produces the high-performance processors for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. All major internet and data corporations depend on Nvidia. States worldwide are vying for the company's investments. The federal government has agreed to a cooperation with Jensen Huang, within which around 10,000 super-chips for AI applications for German industry will be provided. These applications are to integrate AI into the production of machines, vehicles, and robots and thus make them practically usable in the real world. Industrial AI will design, develop, and test entire factories before they are built in the real world, exclaims the CEO of the Siemens Group, Roland Busch, in Berlin: "Industrial AI is the opportunity of the century for Germany, for high-quality jobs and for new growth. Germany must and can be the country where new technologies are developed and scaled. Our decisive advantage in artificial intelligence is the combination of AI with German engineering and industrial data." Speed-Dating with the Cabinet Six ministers, from economy to housing construction to transport, have summoned the federal government as the supreme economic advocates to this summit. They hold seminars and meet with corporate leaders from all over the world in one-on-one talks. "At a pace of 15 minutes, a kind of investment speed dating," says a member of the Federal Ministry of Economics. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil tries to lure the investors into his workshop with a joke. "I want their money, let's talk about it," he says with a wide grin. Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche calls on the listeners in the hall to participate in a new era: "There are enough AI language models. Now AI must be transformed into industrial production." Reiche assures that Germany will play a leading role in this, supported by highly qualified employees and an innovative Mittelstand (medium-sized enterprises). Minister of Transport Verena Hubertz advocates for investments in "concrete gold," i.e., real estate and housing construction in Germany. With a view to the plans for a possible new left-wing state government in Berlin to socialize housing owned by large housing construction companies, Hubertz said the federal government wants to secure and protect investments with a new federal law. Few concrete figures after the summit Will Marshall, CEO of the satellite manufacturer Planet Labs PBC, likes this first summit with the government team of foreign investors. He believes in the German location and already produces in Berlin. The Germans are reliable and well-educated. He produces here for the European market to make Europe more independent in satellites and geo-data. In total, according to the Bundesbank, foreign investors invested 86 billion euros in Germany last year. This amount has almost doubled compared to 2024. The Federal Chancellor expects further direct investments from foreign companies in the German industry of around 800 billion euros by 2030. The economic summit will help to ease these sums, says a member of the Ministry of Economics. However, the goal was not to name a concrete amount of new investments at the end of the day. No contracts were concluded at the Berlin meeting, but investment-ready companies were motivated and convinced. However, the US corporation Amazon announced on the sidelines of the summit that it plans to invest 16 billion euros in its infrastructure for cloud computing and AI applications in Germany in the coming year. The announcement by Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, was also quite concrete. He wants to invest around one billion euros in AI data centers in Germany. In return, the federal government has promised funding of several hundred million euros for joint projects. Huang encouraged German companies to be at the forefront of introducing industrial AI. They should use the data about products and processes that they have collected over decades for training the AI. And he also warned: "You won't get another chance, so use this one."