The United Arab Emirates pledge Germany new investments of 40 billion euros during the state visit of President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed on September 10 and 11, 2026. The money is to flow into data centers with a capacity of around one gigawatt, energy, and industry, a quarter of which will go to Bavaria. At the same time, companies from both countries sign 29 contracts worth over 9.3 billion euros.
Ten billion euros are earmarked for Bavaria
According to a statement from the federal government, the Emirati president first meets Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the Chancellery on September 10, then travels the following day to Munich to meet Bavarian premier Markus Söder. According to berlinmorgen.de, ten of the 40 billion euros – a quarter of the total – will flow to Bavaria, mainly into aerospace, artificial intelligence, and defense technology.
This total figure cannot be independently verified, since only the two governments themselves have put a number on it. Söder comments on the pledge by saying it brings “cash,” orders, and growth. The Emirates had previously already invested around 34 billion euros in Germany, mainly in the chemical and energy sectors.
German and Emirati companies also sign 29 agreements during the visit worth over 9.3 billion euros, including energy firms RWE and Adnoc as well as chemical group Covestro. These individual contracts are the only binding part of the package so far; the rest remains a declaration of intent. For the planned gigawatt of data center capacity, neither side has named locations outside Bavaria yet – construction timelines and grid connections remain just as unclear as for the 5.6-billion-euro data center the Schwarz Group is building near Rostock.
Human rights groups criticize the timing
The state visit falls into a period in which the Emirates face criticism over their role in the Sudan war. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces there stand accused of genocide, war crimes, and the forced displacement of entire populations. Human Rights Watch is demanding that the German government tell Abu Dhabi unambiguously that it is ready to impose sanctions on Emirati actors if support for the RSF is confirmed.
Sarah Reinke of the Society for Threatened Peoples accuses the German government of courting a regime that finances and arms the RSF in Sudan. Without that backing, she argues, the militia could not sustain violence on this scale. A UN report published in early September documents networks that allegedly supplied the RSF with international weapons and mercenary support.
Federal President Steinmeier and Chancellor Merz, by contrast, stress the importance of the Emirates for stability in the Middle East and highlight the economic partnership, without publicly rejecting the allegations. The Emirati government has not commented on the Sudan accusations so far.
An investment council is meant to turn the pledge into projects
Both governments also agree to set up a German-Emirati investment council to coordinate future projects and bring together public and private actors. When the body will meet for the first time is still unclear. For Bavaria, the pledge arrives at a moment when the state is lagging in computing power: according to the Bavarian state government, Hesse already has just over 1,100 megawatts of AI computing capacity, while Bavaria, despite its own billion-euro investments, reaches only about 420 megawatts.
Grid connection is likely to prove decisive for whether the announced data centers succeed: industry surveys show nine in ten operators now name power supply as the most important site criterion, ahead of plot size and location. Connection timelines in Germany are already slipping into the late 2030s in many regions.
The federal government itself is meanwhile promoting its own one-billion-euro funding push for an EU-backed AI gigafactory, whose application deadline runs out on November 12, 2026 – so the UAE pledge supplements rather than replaces state efforts. The Emirates themselves have been building up their profile as an AI investor since the summer, after the United States allowed them license-free shipments of advanced AI chips.
What matters now is whether the announcement actually turns into construction projects: so far only a fraction of the sum is fixed in contracts, and location and timing details for the data centers outside Bavaria are still missing. It also remains open whether the German government will bring the human rights allegations over the Sudan war into the new investment council’s work, or keep the issue separate from the economic talks.
