Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said companies may eventually do much of their product design in digital replicas while robots handle factory production, a vision that would shift where industrial work takes place.
Huang set out the forecast at a Berlin reception on Oct. 19 that opened the Invest in Germany Summit. He said a company's digital twin, a virtual counterpart of its physical operations, could become the workplace for most employees.
In his account, staff would develop products with digital intelligence in that environment. AI robots would then make those products in physical factories. Huang presented the arrangement as a future model for manufacturing.
Huang used the term “physical AI” for systems that act in the real world through robots, vehicles and industrial machinery. He said digital technology would strengthen, rather than replace, Germany's expertise in mechatronics and manufacturing.
Germany is building computing capacity for industrial uses of AI. Deutsche Telekom said its Industrial AI Cloud in Munich began operating in February 2026 with nearly 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell graphics processing units. The company said the cloud is intended for businesses, researchers and public-sector users.
Deutsche Telekom and Nvidia announced the cloud as a €1 billion private-sector partnership in November 2025. They said it would support manufacturing, engineering, simulation, digital twins and robotics.
Huang has made similar predictions before. In a 2025 interview covered by EconoTimes, he said he hoped factories would become more heavily robotic over the following decade, partly in response to what he described as a global labor shortage.
Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space signed a declaration of intent with Nvidia on Oct. 19 to develop AI models for German industry. The government's stated next step is to involve researchers, industry and smaller companies through Plattform Industrie 4.0.
