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At DIGITAL X, Tim Höttges sent a clear signal: Telekom is working on an application for an EU-funded AI Gigafactory and is prepared to make a billion-euro investment if the framework conditions are right. "We are working intensively on this tender and on this application. It should not fail due to lack of funding," said our CEO. For him, digital sovereignty is above all a question of the ability to act. And he is right. Europe needs this infrastructure—for growth, competitiveness, and the digital future.
How great the demand is can be seen from our Industrial AI Cloud in Munich: the AI Factory is largely booked out. That is why we are continuing to expand its capacities. The next step is clear: AI, cloud, and data must be translated into industrial value creation—securely, sovereignly, and with full control over our digital future.
At DIGITAL X in Cologne's Rheinauhafen, we discussed under the motto "Navigate What's Next" how we can deal with this development. The decisive question is not whether the next technological wave is coming. It is already here. What matters is whether we simply go with the flow—or set the course ourselves.
This includes, above all, sovereignty. It is not an abstract political goal or a European end in itself. It determines whether companies can control their data, manage technological dependencies, and use innovations autonomously over the long term. Anyone who wants to scale in Europe needs trustworthy infrastructure, local control, and clear governance.
Sovereignty does not mean isolation. Europe will not become technologically stronger by decoupling itself from innovations from other parts of the world. We need the best technologies and strong global partners.
Sovereignty, to me, means freedom of choice. Companies must be able to decide for themselves which data is stored where, who is allowed to access it, which dependencies they consciously accept, and which workloads require a particularly high degree of control due to their criticality. Public, private, edge, and sovereign cloud models can therefore coexist. What matters is choosing the right environment for each application.
That's exactly what our T Cloud is for. It combines a powerful cloud functionality with different levels of sovereignty and forms the backbone of our digital ecosystem. At the same time, we are opening this ecosystem to partners. ServiceNow runs on T Cloud and is simultaneously connected to our Industrial AI Cloud.
Europe will not become an AI champion by trying to copy other regions one-to-one. We must play to our own strengths. One of these strengths is right at our doorstep: our industrial base.
Automotive, mechanical engineering, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, logistics, robotics, and engineering possess enormous process knowledge and valuable data. With agentic AI and physical AI, there is now an opportunity to combine this knowledge with a new generation of AI. AI can accelerate development cycles, enable predictive machine maintenance, simulate production processes, make robots smarter, and automate entire processes.
Having models alone is not enough. Europe's existing AI infrastructure is insufficient for the next wave of growth. This is precisely where our Industrial AI Cloud in Munich comes in.
What is decisive is not computing power alone. We combine connectivity, data center, compute, T Cloud, and NVIDIA, platforms including those from SAP and ServiceNow, security, and the application layer into a secure and sovereign AI stack.
That is the difference between infrastructure as an end in itself and infrastructure as a foundation for value creation.
Europe does not have to choose between innovation and sovereignty. We need both.
The most important question is therefore not how many GPUs we operate. The most important question is: What do our customers do with them?
At DIGITAL X, this became tangible. Together with partners, we are working on concrete applications for modern factories, predictive maintenance, simulation and physical AI, research in chemistry and pharmaceuticals, digital hospital services, cybersecurity, digital citizen services, and European language models.
With Wandelbots, for example, we demonstrate how industrial AI and robotics can work together. This is only the beginning. When automation, robotics, and AI significantly increase productivity, industrial value creation in Europe can become more competitive again. This is precisely where the strategic leverage of Industrial AI lies: it is not only about improving efficiency in a single process, but also about the question of where value creation will take place in the future.
The stronger we digitalize the economy, public administration, and industry, the more important security becomes. This too became concrete at DIGITAL X.
We showcased our drone detection live there for the first time publicly. Using radio frequency, drones and their pilots can be localized. Depending on the level of protection required, video, audio, remote ID sensors, or radar can be integrated. The information is securely networked and consolidated into a situational picture.
This example illustrates what we mean by an end-to-end approach: no single sensor solves the problem. What matters is the interplay of detection, connectivity, data integration, and decision support. Together with specialized partners such as Rheinmetall, we pool our expertise to better protect critical infrastructure against a range of threats.
Security, cloud, and AI are no longer separate disciplines. The more autonomously digital systems act, the more important secure technology, clear governance, and control become.
Another question that occupies my mind: What does “Made in Germany” mean in the AI age? For me, it means trust above all. Germany stands for engineering, quality, and reliability. But we must not associate "Made in Germany" only with what the previous generations built. We must take responsibility for what lies ahead.
When it comes to AI, cloud, and digitalization, we should once again aspire to be at the forefront: with secure and sovereign technologies, with our data, with our industrial knowledge—and above all with the courage to implement things.
The Industrial AI Cloud is one example of this. It brings together AI computing power and industrial data on a sovereign foundation. It creates the conditions for industry, the public sector, and other critical areas to shape their digital future without relinquishing control over sensitive data and processes.
“Made in Germany” therefore means to me today: preserving trust, embracing the new, and moving from words to action.
Europe has much of what it needs for the next phase of AI: strong industrial companies, excellent research, skilled people, valuable industrial data, and a large single market. What matters now is scaling, speed, and investment.
Our Industrial AI Cloud is not an endpoint. It is the beginning. We need to turn individual applications into platforms, pilot projects into productive processes, and national initiatives into a European ecosystem. This is precisely why we support the European ambition to massively expand AI infrastructure.
No company will build the AI stack of the future alone. We need technology providers, industrial companies, software manufacturers, research, and the public sector. Partners such as NVIDIA, SAP, and Siemens are therefore not a supplement to our strategy. Collaboration is a central component of it.
Europe does not have to choose between innovation and sovereignty. We need both.
DIGITAL X has shown how many technologies are already available for this. Now we need to bring them together, scale them, and translate them into the everyday reality of businesses.
Our digital future will not be decided somewhere else. We can shape it ourselves. We just have to do it now!
