Hello and welcome to this money control interview. We're in conversation with Cedrik Neike, the member of the managing board of Siemens AG and CEO of digital industries, a company that's huge in Europe around the world and also has huge interests in India. Thank you very much Cedrik for talking to us on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum here in Davos. Tell us about the broader themes that you're seeing this year because there has been a lot of talk about industrial AI, physical AI. Are you seeing this in your industry?
Yeah, definitely coming to our industry. I mean, if you go a step back, our industry technology is changing everything at the moment. Industrial AI as the core of it and it's driven by geopolitics, but it's also driven by the talent shortage we have worldwide. And in order to do this, we need to now put it into practice. And this is really happening in the auto industry and the farmer industry. Every industry is looking at it and say, how can I be more efficient and faster?
Um, talk us through the impact that geopolitics is having on growth in industrial AI. Are you coming at it from a supply chain perspective, talent perspective?
Well, if you look at the supply chains, if you look at CO2 and what has happened with the chip crisis which existed, everybody is thinking, I need to be much more flexible than I was in the past. In the past, factories were very sort of precise, repetitive, etc. Now, they need to be much more adaptable. And in order to be adaptable, you need intelligence. In order to have intelligence, you need AI. So I see way more smaller factories, way more adaptive factories. I'll give you an example. In the past it was okay to have, I don't know, 2 million chocolate ice cream. But if an influencer now has a different sort of idea for an ice cream, you need to switch immediately. This has not to do with geopolitics. But it basically shows you how fast these factories have to change.
Right? And you know the perception is that US is on a very fast track when it comes to AI. China is also doing very well but Europe somehow is lagging in that area. Would you agree? And what is holding Europe back? Is it more regulation? Is it the lack of investment, lack of capital, lack of intent?
So regulation doesn't always help. Let's put it this way. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's sort of hindering. The reality is that if you look at AI, consumer AI is very strong in the US. It's also in China. Now, everybody is pivoting towards industrial AI. And I think this is the big chance of Europe and other countries which are very industrially focused, Korea, Japan, to actually take on this because for AI you need data and for data you need to really train your industrial knowledge. So I think Europe has a chance as long as it's not overregulating to have that sort of flip, if you want, in the right direction.
Right. Which brings me to my next question. You know, people we've been speaking to say that one of the beneficiaries of this whole data center boom are companies like Siemens and Schneider Electric which are helping the big tech set up these data centers. How have you benefited from the data center boom?
So you have to think of data centers in the past like machines which you have normal computers. These are becoming AI factories. They're actually becoming factories. What does it mean? In the past you basically had a couple of servers and you needed to cool them. What's happening now, these servers use so much energy and so much heat you need to water cool them and you need to think of them sort of holistically. So what you do is you put data into these AI factory and a model comes out of it. So we are profiting from it not only because we put the electrification of those but also we are saying how could we build a digital model of these new data centers and how do we optimize the whole setup.
Right. I also wanted to understand India in the last year has gotten a lot of investments with respect to data centers. Google Cloud has made massive commitments. Amazon also has plans. Microsoft has also spoken about their plans for India. Are you working with these companies in terms of putting together these AI data centers? TCS for instance has entered into an agreement to set up AI data centers. So are you working with some of these companies?
So we're definitely working in the US with for example we just did a huge announcement with Nvidia but we're also working in India with TCS with Infosys and all of the big players because India is a one country. I don't know if you, for me it's been a country when India does something it takes time but when it does it it does it really. I look at what happens with the telecommunication, how fast telecommunication and how good the telecommunication network.
Neike, C. (2026, January 20). Davos 2026 | Siemens’ Neike: Europe Must Avoid Over-Regulation to Win Industrial AI | 4K [Interview transcript]. moneycontrol. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1004892/
MLA
Cedrik Neike. "Davos 2026 | Siemens’ Neike: Europe Must Avoid Over-Regulation to Win Industrial AI | 4K." moneycontrol, 20 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1004892/.
BibTeX
@misc{neike2026_1004892,
author = {Cedrik Neike},
title = {Davos 2026 | Siemens’ Neike: Europe Must Avoid Over-Regulation to Win Industrial AI | 4K},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, moneycontrol. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jan},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1004892/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
