Google is investing billions in AI in Germany. I asked about Poland and three conditions were mentioned
Google has just announced an investment package in Germany amounting to EUR 5.5 billion. It has just opened a sovereign digital cloud center in Munich, and there are also plans to build a data center in Dietzenbach, expand the data center in Hanau and offices in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. We wrote about the background of these investments, as well as the projects of Microsoft and Meta, in the material below.
Read also: Google is betting on Germany. The war of giants with the USA in Europe. Billions of investments
Hayete Gallot, president of customer service for Google Cloud, responded to Business Insider's question, what the company pays attention to when locating similar investments and why Belgium and Germany were chosen this time, and not, for example, Poland. One of the company's cloud regions, a campus for startups, and the Google Cloud Technology Development Center are located on the Vistula River.
– To be able to invest on a large scale, you have to find the power, you have to find all these things to be able to launch the project so that it meets the feasibility condition. Number one is the ability to find the right conditions in a given country – for example, access to the right energy conditions and business climate. There are scenarios in which a given location will work well as a region, when it is important that there are as few delays as possible – replied the manager.
The rest of the article below the video:
She also pointed to regulatory and market issues. — The second thing is that you have to take into account different AI investment scenarios: there are those where latency is not an issue, and also variants where in-country processing is required due to the sovereignty requirement. Then we look at the market opportunity and see if it's available in that country do we need local processing for machine learning and is there a high demand? If your country has complicated regulations, and we know that we have to be there, this may be a factor that encourages us to invest there and not elsewhere Hayete Gallot continued.
— Then we look at where our customers are and where the demand is coming from. Taking all these factors into account, we get a general picture of where we will invest – she said.
She emphasized that in the context of the development of investments related to artificial intelligence, the entire ecosystem of innovations developed by the country and a given region is also important. — The third thing we look at from an AI perspective is how alive the ecosystem is — startups, government investments that are trying to give momentum to artificial intelligence. Munich, for example, is very active at the moment. There are investments in the ecosystem from Bavaria. These are factors that are interesting because startups are growing, people are investing, and the government has really adapted to innovation. This makes the investment worthwhile, she concluded.
From Munich Grzegorz Kowalczyk, journalist of Business Insider Polska
