German ministries, NVIDIA sign industrial AI declaration

Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space signed a joint declaration of intent with NVIDIA at the Invest in Germany Summit on Oct. 19. The agreement creates a joint initiative to advance models for physical AI, which are designed to operate or guide machines in the physical world.

Separately, alongside the declaration, NVIDIA announced planned investments in Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo and Reflex Aerospace. NVIDIA did not say the investments had closed.

The German government said the initiative will focus on specialized open models for industrial use, drawing on open models including NVIDIA Nemotron and NVIDIA Cosmos. It said the work will be embedded in Germany’s AI roadmap and Platform Industrie 4.0, a network involving government, industry, research and trade associations.

NVIDIA described Chancellor Friedrich Merz as a signatory to the declaration. The German government’s announcement, by contrast, identified the two ministries and NVIDIA as signatories and said Merz attended the summit, but did not identify him as having signed.

NVIDIA said the four investment plans form part of what it called a nearly $10 billion Europe-wide commitment to companies, universities, research institutions and other organizations. That figure remains an attributed company claim. The German government announcement did not mention the startup investment plans or identify public funding for them.

NVIDIA did not disclose the proposed investment amounts, ownership stakes, financing instruments, closing conditions or expected completion dates. Neither announcement specified milestones, financing, intellectual-property terms, data-governance rules or a deployment timetable for the model initiative.