Amazon plans to invest a further 10 billion euros in Germany
The cloud operator and online retailer is stepping up its activities in Germany.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and "Country Manager Amazon.de" Rocco Bräuninger visited Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz at his official residence and informed him about the investment plans.
(Image: Bundesregierung / Sandra Steins)
Amazon has announced plans to invest 10 billion euros in Germany in the coming years. Around 8.8 billion euros of this will be invested in the cloud infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Frankfurt am Main for the AWS Europe region by 2026. The US company is spending 1.2 billion euros on logistics, robotics and company headquarters. In May of this year, Amazon had already announced investments of 7.8 billion euros for the "AWS European Sovereign Cloud" by 2040, which is to be located in Brandenburg.
According to the announcement, Amazon plans to create 4,000 jobs in three new logistics centers by the end of this year: in Horn-Bad Meinberg in North Rhine-Westphalia, which is scheduled to go into operation in late summer 2024, in Erfurt (Thuringia), which has been running since last month, and in Großenkneten, where there has been an Amazon logistics center since August 2023. New company headquarters are to be built in Munich and Berlin, and Amazon plans to expand its research and development center in Berlin.
"Sovereign cloud"
Amazon has invested a good 77 billion euros in Germany since 2010. The company now has around one hundred locations in this country. In addition to Berlin, Aachen, Dresden and Tübingen are also home to Amazon research sites. They are working on products and services for AWS, Amazon Music, Fire TV, Alexa and logistics technology. The additional investments in Berlin will primarily go towards AI and robotics.
With the sovereign Euro Cloud, Amazon wants to attract public authorities and regulated companies as customers. Many of them are unable to use previous AWS offerings due to regulatory requirements. For example, operators of critical infrastructures (KRITIS) were often denied access. According to Amazon, all data and metadata will remain in Europe. Operation and support are provided exclusively by personnel based here. The sovereign Euro Cloud remains physically and logically completely separate from other AWS regions, but should still offer the same level of security, performance and availability. For users, the operation will not differ from previous offerings.
(anw)
