The OECD.AI Policy Navigator

AISI Deutschland is a national competence and evaluation center for Frontier AI models. It combines technical, strategic, and security policy expertise within a single central institution. AISI Deutschland is intended to enable the Federal Government to - identify safety and security-related risks at an early stage, - develop evidence-based courses of action, - strengthen Germany’s digital sovereignty with regard to AI safety and security, and - strategically assess international developments.

Germany’s Data Center Strategy, published in March 2026, aims to double national data centre capacity and quadruple AI compute and HPC capacity by 2030. The data center strategy identifies three priority areas: energy and sustainability, site availability and land use, as well as technology and sovereignty. These areas are supported by 28 measures to be implemented within the next 12 months.

The agenda serves as a guideline for technological and economic objectives. It reflects the common understanding of the measures required to consolidate Germany's position as a nation of technological innovation, ensure technological sovereignty and maintain economic strength. The focus of the agenda is on the further development of six priority key enabling technologies, one of them artificial intelligence, and the strengthening of five research fields.

It sets out a comprehensive vision for the use of AI systems in the judiciary, along with the necessary action plans and measures to achieve this vision. The strategy aims to harness the opportunities offered by AI for the judiciary at federal and state levels, while taking due account of the associated risks and limitations. Notably, the strategy anticipates providing forward-looking support for judicial and administrative processes, enhancing access to justice, and promoting innovation in AI.

The Agentic AI Hub is a German initiative by the Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernization, launched on 9 March 2026, pairing 17 municipalities with ten start-ups across 18 pilot projects covering administrative tasks such as housing benefit and naturalisation. Startups and municipalities were selected from around 400 start-up and almost 200 municipal applications.

SPARK ("Accelerating Planning and Approval through AI") is a German initiative developed by the Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernization and financed via the Climate and Transformation Fund. It provides agentic AI tools that accelerate complex planning and approval procedures by analysing application files, checking completeness and plausibility, and preparing decision proposals, while final decisions remain with staff. The tools were released as open source in April 2026.

The ICT sector is particularly shaped by SMEs: they account for more than 90 percent of IT companies in Germany. They are an important engine of innovation and a key interface for transferring research results from science to the economy.

A German national alliance of high-performance computing (HPC) centres providing researchers and industry with access to supercomputing resources, support services, and training, jointly funded by federal and Länder governments.

A German national network of AI transfer and demonstration centres supporting SME manufacturers in adopting AI and data-driven technologies in production, operated through a distributed hub network co-funded by BMFTR.

A EUR 125M pan-European challenge competition run by Germany's Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIND), funding up to 10 teams for 24 months to build European Frontier AI labs, with up to 3 winners positioned to raise EUR 1B scale-up rounds.

A German federal programme supporting knowledge-intensive technology startups spun out from universities and research institutions, providing grant funding to founders for business development, including AI ventures.

A German federal R&D tax credit introduced in 2020, providing a 25% tax allowance on qualifying R&D costs for all taxable German companies (raised to 35% for SMEs from 2024), applicable to AI development and research activities.

Germany's most important technology-neutral federal innovation grant programme for SMEs, providing project grants of 25–60% of R&D costs to support innovative product, process, and technology development including AI, with an annual budget of approximately EUR 630M.

The German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR)'s strategic update to Germany's national AI strategy, comprising 50+ existing and 20+ new AI measures across eleven action areas, backed by over EUR 1.6B in BMFTR AI investment in the current legislative period.

A set of BSI and federal programmes offering cybersecurity-related guides, checklists and subsidised advisory services to improve baseline IT security in small and medium enterprises.

An AI Factory built around Europe’s JUPITER exascale supercomputer (Forschungszentrum Jülich) that enables industry and researchers to access exascale compute for AI R&D and industrial pilots.

A EuroHPC-backed AI Factory in Germany that supplies HPC/AI infrastructure, engineering support and services to researchers, SMEs and industry for large-scale model training and deployment.

GovData is Germany's national open data portal, providing transparent, open, and freely usable administrative data from federal and state government bodies. The portal covers categories including energy, environment, regions and cities, government and public sector, agriculture, health, and science and technology. Data is searchable via keyword, advanced filters, a map interface, and covers all 16 German federal states.

The Budget Committee of the Bavarian State Parliament has approved an investment of € 270 million for the construction of a high-performance computing center at FAU. A new building for the IT infrastructure and a new office building are being constructed, with groundbreaking planned for 2026.

Since 2021, the German government's data labs have recruited experts in data science and AI from academia, civil society, and the private sector to support the federal administration. These experts help develop and implement AI-driven solutions within government agencies, making data and AI more useful in decision-making and public services. Through exploring and testing new AI applications, the data labs help to modernise administrative processes and promote AI technologies in the public sector