I spent 2 days at Axel Springer’s AI summit. My takeaway was that Germany wants to fight like hell to stay in the AI arms race.

• I flew 2,950 miles to Berlin for the Welt AI Summit — two days of discussions on the future of AI.
• OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Palantir’s Alex Karp, and the head of Germany’s DOGE-like ministry spoke.
• My main takeaway was that Germany needs to scale back regulation so that new tech can flourish.

This week, Axel Springer hosted business leaders and politicians to debate the present and future of artificial intelligence.

Full disclosure: Axel Springer and our emcee, CEO Mathias Döpfner, own Business Insider.

The sleek, futuristic set, ringed with microphones, notebooks, and coffee, made me feel like I was on the bridge of a starbase.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman may run a startup, but Berlin greeted him as a visiting head of state.

He’d brought good news. OpenAI said Wednesday it will partner with German software giant SAP to enable millions of the country’s public sector employees to use ChatGPT.

Germany is OpenAI’s fifth-largest market, and “virtually all” Germans ages 18 to 24 use ChatGPT, Altman said.

Döpfner recited a popular criticism of Europe that it regulates new technology before it can take root. He asked if a more iterative approach to rule-making made sense.

“The tech is moving so fast,” Altman said, “that trying to write the regulation now and have it be correct over decades to come is an impossible task.”

Altman proclaimed fusion the “end state of power on earth.”

And he forecast a flood of small to midsize businesses run by solo founders and ChatGPT.

As their talk wrapped up, I slipped into the hallway to try to catch Altman on his way out.

Success! We talked about his meeting with the German chancellor and the changing visa policy back home.

Altman is a tough act to follow. Maybe that’s why organizers put Germany’s version of Elon Musk onstage next.

Karsten Wildberger is Germany’s first-ever federal minister for digital transformation and government modernization. Think DOGE for Deutschland.

He wants to scale back regulation. “We have to start to open up the gates and allow our companies to innovate much, much faster,” he said.

Deregulation became the battle cry of the day.

Entrepreneurs and politicians asked how else they could jump-start Germany’s tech hub.

One venture capitalist said Germany has an abundance of seed capital, but not enough growth capital to help startups scale. So they end up migrating to other countries.

Richard Socher, a German-born founder who runs You.com, pointed out that venture capital translates as “risk capital” in German. He said this indicates that Germans often focus more on the downsides than the potential rewards.

The last speaker gave the room a pep rally buzz more than a conference vibe.

Palantir’s Alex Karp dialed in to motivate the Germans. He cheered Germany’s focus on vocational schools and “a culture of industrialization that’s second to none.”

Karp, a fluent German speaker who studied at a university in Frankfurt, argued that Germany shouldn’t try to clone Silicon Valley but instead define its own model — one that draws on the country’s strengths and channels its native talent.

“You’re not going to build Silicon Valley in Germany,” Karp said, “You’re going to build a German version.”

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