Germany is spearheading a power-packed speaker delegation at GITEX AI EUROPE 2026, as government, big tech and scale-up leaders, quantum frontrunners and investors take centre-stage when Europe’s most global tech and startup event opens next week in Berlin.
German leaders comprise 60 percent of the event’s 150-plus expert speakers, drawn from a line-up spanning 33 countries across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. That’s in addition to a powerhouse exhibition, featuring 950-plus enterprises and startups and 600-plus investors from more than 80 nations to accelerate investment across a European tech market forecast to surpass €1.5 trillion in 2026.
GITEX AI EUROPE takes place from 30 June-1 July 2026, with the conference programme running across three stages and five themes: DeepTech & Critical Supply Chains, on securing Europe’s industrial backbone; Compute & AI Stack, on the route from foundation models to enterprise deployment; Secure Infra & Cyber Power, on AI-era defence and quantum resilience; Capital & Scale-Up Engine, on Europe’s new funding playbook; and Policy to Production, on turning EU AI Act regulation into competitive advantage.
Thirteen German speakers anchor the headline sessions, mapping onto the five-theme structure: from policy and infrastructure questions opening the show, through enterprise deployment and quantum resilience, to the capital deciding what gets built next.
DeepTech & critical supply chains and policy to production
Dr. Karsten Wildberger, Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, opens with a Main Stage fireside, ‘The Gigawatt Guarantee: Engineering Europe’s Industrial AI Supremacy,’ at 11.00–11.30am, on the industrial capacity question underpinning the DeepTech & Critical Supply Chains theme. Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur and leading German implementation of the EU AI Act, follows with a 10.00–10.30am Intelligence Stage panel on 1 July, ‘Who Controls Computing When AI Outgrows Europe’s Grids and Networks?’ with a direct read on the Policy to Production theme.
Enterprise and AI leadership: Compute & AI Stack
Prof. Dr. Robert Mayr, CEO and Chairman of the Board at DATEV eG, speaks on the Main Stage on 30 June from 12:30-12:50pm in ‘Transformation in Practice: How Technology Creates Real Value Through Application,’ arguing AI can sharpen efficiency and decision-making for SMEs under cost and structural pressure, provided regulation doesn’t choke off innovation.
Mayr said: “Europe has excellent prerequisites, with highly qualified professionals and a large common economic area. The crucial point is that we don’t stifle innovation in Europe through overregulation”.
Dr. Jarek Kutylowski, CEO of DeepL, used by more than 200,000 clients, and one of Europe’s biggest AI unicorns, follows with a Main Stage fireside, ‘Europe’s AI Advantage: Building Intelligence Infrastructure That Competes Globally,’ at 1.10–1.30pm on 30 June.
Niklas Harzheim, GTM lead for OpenAI in the DACH region, Tomáš Vocetka, CTO of travel platform Omio, and Daniel Khachab, Co-founder and CEO of Choco then sit on a 3.20–4.00pm panel the same day, ‘Language Models as Europe’s New Economic Infrastructure,’ on how foundation models move from pilot to enterprise-wide deployment, delving into Compute & AI Stack theme’s central question.
Harzheim said: “Working with digital-native companies in Germany and across Europe, I am thrilled to see AI moving from experimentation into the core of how businesses build products, serve customers and operate. The opportunity now is to turn those strengths into deployment at scale, and pilot projects into real business impact”.
Vocetka, addressing Europe’s regulatory and operational fragmentation, said: “Europe has a long history of building businesses in complex environments… AI is well suited to those environments. In its own way, Europe’s fragmentation is now its competitive advantage in the AI era”.
Rickard Damm, SVP, Consumer AI – Product Marketing at Deutsche Telekom, joins a 2.30–3.00pm Main Stage panel on 30 June, ‘AI at the Network Layer,’ exploring how Europe’s leading network operators are embedding AI at infrastructure level.
Quantum and cybersecurity: Secure infra & cyber power
Three German quantum leaders converge on sovereign infrastructure, the throughline of the Secure Infra & Cyber Power theme. Dr. Markus Pflitsch, CEO of the $3.25 billion Nasdaq-bound Terra Quantum, and a former CERN physicist, opens with a 10.20–10.40am fireside on day two (1 July), ‘Which Quantum Infrastructure Should Europe Truly Own.’ Dr. Katrin Kobe, CEO of Bosch Quantum Sensing, developing Europe’s flagship diamond-based quantum sensor platform, and Dr. Alexander Glätzle, CEO of planqc, a Max Planck Institute spinout building Germany’s first commercial neutral-atom quantum computers, then join a 2.25–3.05pm panel on 1 July, ‘Quantum Is the Bet European Leaders Should Not Delay,’ arguing quantum-resilient infrastructure can’t wait for the technology to mature.
Capital: capital & scale-up engine
Stefan B. Wintels, CEO of KfW, Germany’s largest development bank, managing a €1 billion growth fund, opens this theme with an 11.20–11.40am fireside on 1 July, ‘Germany’s Capital Engine as a World Example,’ positioning German state-backed financing as a template for the continent. Florian Heinemann of Project A, Europe’s largest operational VC with €1.2 billion AUM and 130+ portfolio companies, follows with a 3.35–4.10pm panel the same day, ‘Can Europe Lead in Deeptech Research and Still Win at Series B?’, confronting the growth-stage funding gap the Capital & Scale-Up Engine theme is built to address.
Together, the thirteen sessions trace a single arc: from the regulatory and infrastructure foundations of European AI, through enterprise deployment, to the capital deciding what gets built next.
GITEX AI EUROPE is organised by inD, the joint venture between Dubai World Trade Centre and Informa, and the global organiser of GITEX, the world’s largest tech and AI event network. The annual two-day event is supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises and Berlin Partner for Business and Technology.
More information is available at www.gitexeurope.com
Image Credit: GITEX AI Europe
Source: Tahawul Tech