» Speaker · Davos Catalyst 2027

Ulrich Ahle

Chief Executive Officer, Gaia-X

Building Europe's sovereign data and AI infrastructure

Ulrich Ahle is Chief Executive Officer of Gaia-X, the European association building a federated and secure data infrastructure in which companies and public institutions share data under their own rules. Before joining Gaia-X in 2023, he founded and led the FIWARE Foundation and headed the manufacturing and Industrie 4.0 business of Atos in Germany. He is a co-founder and board member of the International Data Spaces Association.

For more than three decades, Ulrich Ahle has worked where industry and digital infrastructure meet. As Vice President at Atos in Germany he led the manufacturing and Industrie 4.0 system integration business, before founding the FIWARE Foundation in 2016 and serving as its CEO, building an open-source ecosystem for smart solutions across cities, industry and energy.

Since November 2023 he has led Gaia-X, the Brussels-based association that brings together companies, research institutions and public bodies to create trusted, federated data ecosystems in Europe. Gaia-X defines the rules, standards and trust framework that allow data to be shared across organisations and borders without giving up control over it.

Data Sovereignty
Data Spaces
Federated Infrastructure
European AI

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At Davos Catalyst

At Davos Catalyst, Ulrich Ahle speaks to one of the defining questions of the AI era: who controls the data on which Europe's AI will be built, and how sovereignty and openness can coexist. Read more on sovereign and defense AI. Davos Catalyst takes place 12–15 January 2027 at the Rätia Center, Davos Platz.

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