Amazon plans to invest more than €16 billion ($18 billion) in Germany in 2027, including €4.8 billion to expand the AWS Europe (Frankfurt) region, the company said on Oct. 20. Chancellor Friedrich Merz and federal economy and energy minister Katherina Reiche appeared with Amazon chief global affairs and legal officer Da
Wide exterior perspective of a modern hyperscale data center facility in the Frankfurt data center market.vid Zapolsky at the announcement, held during the government's Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin.
Only one company at the summit put a firm number on the table. Merz said the event drew commitments of roughly €230 billion, DW reported the economy ministry's tally at more than €225 billion, and AFP noted Amazon was the only participant to attach a specific figure to its plans.
The Frankfurt allocation is the largest disclosed piece of the pledge. Amazon says the €4.8 billion funds cloud and AI capacity for German customers, on top of more than €18 billion it has invested in German cloud and AI infrastructure since the Frankfurt region opened in October 2014, per its Germany fact sheet. A separate €7.8 billion through 2040 backs the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in Brandenburg, generally available since January 2026.
Amazon treats the €4.8 billion as 2027 spending. ppc.land flagged that AWS vice president Stefan Höchbauer described it as planned "to expand the AWS Frankfurt Region through 2027," wording that could cover a multi-year period ending in that year. Amazon does not resolve the difference.
"Germany is a hub of innovation and one of the most attractive investment opportunities in Europe," said Zapolsky. "That is why we have invested more than €100 billion here since 2010, and why we plan to invest an additional €16 billion in 2027."
Reiche framed the spending as industrial policy. "High-performance data centers are the foundation of the digital economy," she said, adding that Germany has the potential to become a global leader in industrial AI.
Baxtel counts 149 data center facilities in the Frankfurt market, the largest being NTT Frankfurt 1 Campus at 78 MW, with 24 under construction and market power up 152 percent since 2022. The tracker lists 681 Amazon AWS sites worldwide.
Cooling is the other constraint Amazon is pitching. The company says about 95 percent of the time its data centers in Germany / Deutschland use free air cooling with no water involved, and that planned facilities will run on harvested rainwater when evaporative cooling is needed on the hottest days.
Amazon is funding this expansion from its own balance sheet rather than through third-party leases, in a market where two dozen facilities are already under construction. Colocation operators in Hesse are bidding for the same megawatts as a tenant that keeps choosing to build instead of rent. The Berlin summit produced a large headline number, but only one company put a firm figure behind it.
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