Deutsche Telekom Weighs Bavarian AI Expansion Against EU Funding Hurdles as Höttges Courts Berlin
Published on 11/09/2026 at 15:31 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Deutsche Telekom is sizing up a substantially larger artificial intelligence footprint in Bavaria, but the Bonn-based group is in no rush to commit. At a Munich press conference held under the banner "AI Factory 2.0: More digital sovereignty for customers in Germany and Europe," chief executive Tim Höttges floated the prospect of so-called AI gigafactories drawing power in the triple-digit megawatt range — a leap well beyond anything the company operates today.
The obstacle is money, not ambition. Höttges described financing within the framework of an EU tender as difficult, pointing to a low guaranteed minimum utilization rate and a requirement to reserve 60% of capacity for public institutions. Those conditions push the contractual underpinning of any future project to the fore. Existing demand is not in question; the question is whether binding commitments and funding terms can carry the additional outlay.
Munich campus fills up, and the build-out follows
The commercial case rests on the facility already running. Reuters reported fresh investment of more than EUR 250 million into the Munich AI factory, which opened in February 2026 at a cost of roughly EUR 1 billion. Its first expansion stage is fully booked, with Siemens, Daimler Truck and Agile Robots among the users — a customer base that lends weight to the demand story, particularly if it translates into dependable utilization of added capacity.
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Hardware for the enlargement is already specified: servers built on Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra B300, suited among other things to training AI models. The chips are slated to reach 20 megawatts of total power draw, and according to Handelsblatt the additional silicon is due to go live in May. Telekom says the data center runs entirely on renewable energy, and waste heat is earmarked to supply the Tucherpark district going forward — meaning the next phase spans energy supply and heat reuse as much as raw compute.
A second track: sovereign silicon and a word with the Chancellor
Beyond the Munich site, T-Systems and Sparxity signed a letter of intent roughly a week before the press conference to collaborate on energy-efficient AI computing infrastructure. The plan covers integration and validation of Sparxity's AI chips and compute systems for Telekom data centers, with the next chip generation targeted for 2028. Energy efficiency sits at the heart of that arrangement.
Höttges is also working the corridors of power. Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday, citing four insiders, that he is lobbying Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the federal government for backing on a combination of Deutsche Telekom with T-Mobile US. Separately, in a media report published on Saturday, he weighed in on SpaceX's planned mobile offering, arguing a competitive network demands on-the-ground presence and deep pockets. His larger concern, the report suggested, is a new communications business model rather than a rival network as such — he likened the potential disruption to the upheaval Tesla brought to the auto industry.
Investors get their next hard numbers on 25 February 2027, when the group publishes fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 results. Until then, the read-across for shareholders is a conditional one: extra AI infrastructure strengthens the business only if Telekom can square demand, financing and operating costs. Full utilization at the existing site is a encouraging signal; the size of the next big step will be settled by the financial framework.
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