When Bernd Wagner walks past the headquarters of his new company, he can barely contain his excitement. He starts rattling off figures like “seven times more steel than was used to build the Eiffel Tower” or “cables stretching all the way to Naples.”
Wagner Schwarz is responsible for cloud business and sales at Digits. All that steel and cabling has been moved to the new head office, which will officially open on July 21, 2026.
Designed for 3,500 employees and complete with a daycare center, restaurants and fitness facilities, the campus is reminiscent of the headquarters of Amazon, Apple or Google.
Located on a hill, five multi-storey curved glass buildings in a honeycomb arrangement surround a small pond in the center of the so-called “Schwarz Digits Campus”, with plenty of greenery and shady benches. “It’s a statement,” says Wagner. “We don’t need to hide from Google or anyone else.”
From Supermarket to Digitization
However, the new offices are not located in California, but in a small town in southern Germany – Bad Friedrichshall. It’s not far from Heilbronn, the hometown of Wagner’s boss, possibly the richest man in Germany: Dieter Schwarz, now 86.
It was from Heilbronn that Schwarz built his supermarket empire. Now, more than 600,000 people around the world work for companies under the Schwarz Group umbrella.
The group grew mainly through its Lidl and Kaufland supermarket chains. But because the Schwarz Group likes to keep everything in-house, it has expanded in all directions: food production, waste management, recycling – and now digitalization.
Last year, the Schwarz Group generated revenues of nearly €185 billion (€162 billion), more than SAP, Mercedes or Bayer. In Germany, only carmaker Volkswagen made more money than Schwarz.
The Schwarz Group has a long-standing reputation for secrecy. Its founder is rarely discussed in public. To date, hardly any photographs of Schwarz exist. Some reports state that he could walk around Heilbronn without being detected.
Betting on Germany as a Business Destination
Now Schwarz Group is making headlines with a new story – about Germany as a hub of digital freedom and innovation. “If you’re not at the table, you end up on the menu,” Wagner says from his air-conditioned office.
Schwarz Digits has in recent years primarily managed the IT infrastructure of approximately 14,500 supermarkets worldwide. Now, the company is also offering its cloud and security solutions to businesses and government agencies.
The goal, Wagner says, is to ensure that Germany and Europe regain their seat at the table and are no longer solely dependent on technology from the United States or China: “We want to restore Europe’s ability to function.”
It’s a strategy that’s clearly in tune with the times. The company is currently winning big contracts one after the other. Its clients and partners include the Dutch government, various German ministries and the German Football Association (DFB).
In the Spreewald region, about an hour’s drive south of Berlin, Schwarz Digits is building a data center. At €11 billion it represents the largest investment in the company’s history.
How much the new headquarters in Bad Friedrichshall will cost has not been disclosed. It is clear that the objective of this facility is to attract and retain IT talent. The message is simple: Why move to expensive Silicon Valley when you can lead the future right here in southern Germany?
Heilbronn turns into a knowledge city
Billionaire Schwarz quickly learned that success depends on people, talent and education. The Dieter Schwarz Foundation has been active since 1999 with a focus on education, science, research and entrepreneurship. Anyone taking a stroll in Heilbronn can see how the talents of the future are being developed here.
An example is the education campus of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, where several German research institutions train approximately 8,000 students – with plans to expand that number significantly.
A short distance away is Experimenta, which bills itself as Germany’s largest science center. Visitors can experience artificial intelligence and technology first-hand. The Experimenta has become both a city landmark and a major tourist attraction.
Heilbronn’s mayor, Harry Mergel, helped initiate the construction of Experimenta 20 years ago, when he took on a different civic role. One of the major funders at that time was the Dieter Schwarz Foundation.
Mergel has been mayor of the city of more than 130,000 residents since 2014. He also speaks less about prominent patron Schwarz, who continues to live in the city and prefers to stay out of the spotlight. “Everyone has the right to remain anonymous,” Mergel says.
Mega Project: Artificial Intelligence Campus
However, there is one thing he wants to share: “The Schwarz Group and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation play a decisive role in transforming Heilbronn into a knowledge city,” Mergel says in his office in Heilbronn’s city hall.
That change is already visible. Heilbronn, whose residents were once jokingly nicknamed “Heilbronx”, now ranks among the cities with the highest purchasing power in Germany in some surveys. The influx of Indian and Chinese residents also shows that IT jobs are attracting people to the city.
Then there is a major project that is set to further raise the city’s international profile in the years to come. With the innovation park Artificial Intelligence – known as IPAI – Heilbronn aims to compete with cities like London and Paris.
5,000 people are expected to work and conduct research at the site just outside the city; The first buildings are scheduled to open in 2027. Here too, the Dieter Schwarz Foundation and the Schwarz Group are key players.
The total cost of the project has not been disclosed. The AI Innovation Park has been operating as a network since 2022, and around 140 companies and partners are now working on AI projects in Heilbronn.
Although no one knows yet how fast AI will develop, Merzl says, “There will be no company, no industry and no public administration that can remain competitive without it.” [it].” So the IPAI is “something like an insurance policy for the region,” says Merzel, whose tenure is until 2030, adding: “The future is being built in Heilbronn.”
‘We are here to stay’
From Heilbronn’s City Hall, it takes only a 15-minute drive to the Schwarz Digits headquarters. There, a cooking robot prepares six different dishes for the IT geniuses around the clock.
“This region will soon become the largest AI center in Germany and Europe,” Wagner says with conviction. He believes black digits will be at the center of this.
But can the company really compete with the tech giants? For example, Amazon generated $135 billion in cloud revenue last year alone. Schwarz Digits, across all its activities, brings in just €2.2 billion.
“We’re here to stay,” Wagner says confidently. He argues that opportunities will come from the market as Germany and Europe urgently need independent IT solutions.
Wagner’s appeal for digital sovereignty seems, at times, like a PR strategy. Yet his boss, Schwarz, has proven more than once that he has both the will and the instincts to back the right horse.
The Schwarz Group is now the largest retailer in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. Then again, it’s entirely possible that Germany’s richest man will eventually win his big tech bet.
This piece was originally published in German.