Bundesbank keynote: Shaping AI's economic and energy impacts

Joachim Nagel of Deutsche Bundesbank delivered a keynote in Rome outlining AI’s likely effects on growth, inflation and financial stability and describing concrete institutional responses (Bundesbank AI strategy) and EU investment initiatives.

• Main announcement/action: The Deutsche Bundesbank has adopted a comprehensive AI strategy and reports that two out of three staff now use AI regularly in a secured environment; the speech also highlights the EU’s InvestAI initiative to mobilise €200 billion (including a €20 billion fund for AI gigafactories) and an EU energy-efficiency package for data centers expected in 2026.
• Background and concrete details: The keynote compares AI diffusion to historical general-purpose technologies, cites private AI investment totals (US$109.1bn in the USA, US$19.4bn in Europe, US$9.3bn in China) and estimates of state support (China ~US$62bn, US ~US$3.3bn, EU ~US$1.2bn); it notes data-center constraints (e.g., 3–5 year grid connection delays in Dublin and Frankfurt) and references harmonised central-bank surveys in Italy and Germany (2024–25).