Siemens Aktiengesellschaft (ETR:SIE) used its CES 2026 stage to frame artificial intelligence as a “general-purpose technology” on par with electricity, with President and CEO Roland Busch arguing the next phase of AI will be defined by its ability to scale into physical systems such as factories, infrastructure, energy grids, and transportation.
Busch: Industrial AI moves from feature to “force”
In his keynote, Busch said AI is moving faster than prior technology shifts, noting steam took decades to transform society, while AI could be embedded into the systems people rely on “in seven years or less.” He emphasized that in industrial deployments “hallucination is not acceptable,” positioning Siemens’ approach around reliability, safety, and end-to-end integration.
Busch also cited Siemens’ scale and industrial footprint, including that Siemens controllers are used in “one out of three manufacturing machines worldwide.” He said Siemens has more than 1,500 AI experts and over 250,000 employees with industrial domain knowledge across 30 verticals.
Expanded NVIDIA partnership: five collaboration areas
Busch was joined by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to discuss what both leaders described as a shared vision for an “Industrial AI operating system.” Huang said the pieces of that vision are “finally coming together,” and Busch outlined five areas where the companies plan to intensify collaboration.
- AI-native chip design: Huang described NVIDIA’s latest Vera Rubin system as a rack-scale platform, citing 240 kilowatts, 220 trillion transistors, two tons, and “150,000 engineering years.” The companies discussed using digital twins to model chips and entire systems, and accelerating Siemens EDA and Simcenter tools using CUDA to leverage GPUs.
- AI-native simulation: The companies said they intend to move more simulation workloads from CPUs to GPUs. Huang and Busch discussed plans to accelerate Siemens’ Simcenter solvers with CUDA and CUDA-X and to develop “AI physics” that can emulate physical outcomes to accelerate experimentation by orders of magnitude.
- AI-driven adaptive manufacturing: Huang described the factory as “one giant robot” orchestrating robots. Busch said Siemens will start in Germany in 2026 with what he called a first “fully AI-driven adaptive manufacturing site,” with an “AI brain” on top of software-defined automation and operations software, operating in real time.
- AI factories (data centers): Huang said a one-gigawatt AI factory could require $50 billion in investment, with little tolerance for schedule delays or design changes. Both executives emphasized digital twins for upfront planning and simulation, and AI for operating complex facilities.
- “We drink our own beer”: The executives described a feedback loop where Siemens tools help accelerate NVIDIA development and vice versa, including faster EDA and simulation enabling faster chip and factory design.
New Digital Twin Composer and early customer results
Siemens also announced the launch of Digital Twin Composer, a tool Busch said can create virtual 3D models of products, plants, and processes, connect them to real-time data, and enable users to move backward and forward in time to analyze issues or simulate future designs. Busch said the product will be available on the Siemens Xcelerator Marketplace shortly after the keynote.
PepsiCo was highlighted as an early adopter. Athena Kanyura, PepsiCo’s Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer (and newly appointed CEO of Latin America Foods), said the company is using a “digital-first design approach” to optimize layouts before spending on physical build, especially for older warehouses. Kanyura said the Digital Twin Composer enables PepsiCo to explore hundreds or thousands of layouts and compress tasks that previously took months into days.
She cited early results from the Gatorade plant in the U.S., saying PepsiCo increased efficiency by 20% in three months and estimated a 10% to 15% CapEx reduction across operations.
Microsoft partnership: models, agents, and industrial copilots
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared via recorded remarks, highlighting the partnership’s goal of combining Siemens’ industrial expertise with Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities, including co-engineering “custom models and agents” trained with real-world industrial data. Microsoft’s Jay Parikh described three “waves” of AI adoption—chatbots, delegated tasks, and orchestration of agents—and said Microsoft is focused on the third wave, emphasizing security, compliance, observability, and enterprise readiness.
Busch also cited examples including Rolls-Royce aircraft turbines, describing a digital twin of a hydraulic pump and the machines that produce it. Parikh said joint copilots helped reduce CAM programming time by 80% and raised factory productivity by 30% in that context.
Copilots, smart glasses, fusion, and grid stability
Busch said Siemens is launching nine additional AI-powered industrial copilots across the industrial value chain. He also announced work with Meta to bring Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses into industrial settings, providing real-time audio guidance to shop-floor workers. Siemens said early tests show workers are more confident and productive.
On energy constraints tied to AI infrastructure, Busch introduced Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO Bob Mumgaard, who said CFS is building a tokamak-based system and is assembling its SPARC facility in Massachusetts. Mumgaard said CFS installed the first “big magnet” for SPARC and described plans for ARC, a commercial system expected to generate about 400 megawatts, adding that Google has agreed to buy power from ARC.
Busch also pointed to grid constraints, saying Siemens is using AI to maximize existing grid capacity by 20% without new infrastructure and described grid simulations such as the impact of adding 10,000 electric vehicles and coordinated building demand response to support stability.
Closing his keynote, Busch argued that as electricity became an invisible fabric of daily life, industrial AI could follow a similar path—enabling more predictable operations, fewer outages, and faster innovation—if it can be scaled reliably into the physical world.
About Siemens Aktiengesellschaft (ETR:SIE)
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, a technology company, focuses in the areas of automation and digitalization in Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. It operates through Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, Mobility, Siemens Healthineers, and Siemens Financial Services (SFS) segments. The Digital Industries segment provides automation systems and software for factories, numerical control systems, servo motors, drives and inverters, and integrated automation systems for machine tools and production machines; process control systems, machine-to-machine communication products, sensors and radio frequency identification systems; software for production and product lifecycle management, and simulation and testing of mechatronic systems; and the Mendix cloud-native low-code application development platform.
