Schneider Electric to Take Over Cognite in $3.1 Billion Deal to Strengthen Industrial AI Portfolio

What happened:

Schneider Electric Corporation has announced that it has entered into a merger agreement with the industrial software company Cognite. The merger will strengthen Schneider Electric’s position in the industrial artificial intelligence sector as Cognite’s data and AI technology will be integrated with Schneider Electric’s industrial software product line.

Cognite was founded in 2017 and is well known for its industrial data platform that provides businesses with the ability to amalgamate and make sense of data coming from engineering, operations and enterprise systems. Cognite has managed to establish itself in the asset-centric industries that wish to employ artificial intelligence technology into their procedures.

Why this matters:

Large corporations create huge volumes of operational data. However, extracting meaningful insights out of it is quite a challenging task. Cognite is solving the problem through the creation of a platform that aggregates the data from various data sources and makes it usable for analytics and artificial intelligence purposes.

The acquisition brings an additional dimension to Schneider Electric’s industrial software offering in an era of manufacturers seeking to move beyond traditional automation and find ways to enhance productivity, asset performance and operational efficiency through AI. 

Industry context:

Manufacturers are striving to shift from monitoring operations to making things faster. This is one of the drivers behind the growth of industrial AI. However, several organizations are still challenged by the disconnection and decentralization of data across multiple systems and departments.

SchneiderElectric is looking to develop a more 

connected platform powered by Cognite’s industrial data capabilities and AVEVA’s software solutions to provide complete coverage of the industrial lifecycle from engineering and design through to operations and optimization.

JotSpot is also caught up in a wider pattern among industrial technology firms to invest in software, AI and data platforms to complement their automation offerings. With the rise of AI use, having reliable and contextually relevant industrial data is becoming more and more a competitive edge.

Upon regulatory approval, Cognite will become part of the AVEVA family and will be part of Schneider Electric’s Industrial Automation business.