Microsoft Invests Billions to Expand AI and Cloud Capacity in Germany

By 2025, Microsoft plans to spend $3.4 billion to double its artificial intelligence and cloud capacities in Germany and train more than 1.2 million people in digital skills. This is Microsoft’s largest investment in Germany ever. The company announced the investment on February 15.

We want to enable the German economy to benefit from AI in order to continue to expand its global leadership in competitiveness. We see increasing demand for AI applications in key economic sectors such as manufacturing, automotive, financial services, pharmaceuticals, life sciences and medical technology. Because these industries are fundamentally changing due to economic change, it is important to equip companies in Germany with world-leading technology.
—Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft

German advantage: Germany ranks second worldwide in the nationwide use of AI by companies. It also has a well-established industry that promises to greatly benefit from the AI revolution.

“We also shouldn’t say that all these developments already happened; artificial intelligence is still something Europe could shape,” former German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said on Puls 4-Talk in 2019. “We have a well-established industry, which still has to be far more connected to the new technologies. But once this happens, it will develop a totally different field of power than a purely technological or digitalization firm.”

The Germans are moving fast, and in some ways they are already ahead of America. What we see in the news is only a fraction of what is going on behind the scenes, I am sure.
—Gerald Flurry, Trumpet editor in chief, “The Unknown Future of Artificial Intelligence”