The Schwarz Group, Europe’s largest retail conglomerate and owner of Lidl and Kaufland, is advancing plans with Deutsche Telekom to pursue one of the European Union’s flagship AI gigafactory projects, massive data centres designed to host and train next-generation artificial intelligence models.
Under current discussions, Schwarz and Deutsche Telekom aim to jointly build an AI-focused data centre in Germany and apply for funding from the EU’s €20 billion AI gigafactory initiative, which targets four to five facilities capable of hosting roughly 100,000 AI chips each. Schwarz is already executing a historic €11 billion investment in a new data centre campus in Lübbenau, Brandenburg, planned with up to 100,000 GPUs, highlighting its ambitions to offer sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure beyond its retail operations.
For European FMCG retailers and manufacturers, this collaboration signals a strategic pivot: harnessing AI for supply-chain optimization, demand forecasting, automated product management, and localized model development, while keeping data within the EU’s regulatory framework. Schwarz’s STACKIT cloud infrastructure emphasizes data sovereignty and compliance with European standards—a growing priority among regulated industries wary of dependence on U.S. hyperscalers.
The broader picture reflects Europe’s pursuit of technological autonomy. By combining Telekom’s connectivity and data-centre expertise with Schwarz’s cloud ambitions, the partnership could accelerate digital transformation in consumer goods sectors while strengthening European AI ecosystems and reducing reliance on non-European cloud providers.