Member of the Managing Board (CEO Digital Industries), Siemens
Davos 2026 | Siemens’ Neike: Europe Must Avoid Over-Regulation to Win Industrial AI | 4K
Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Digital Industries, speaks on the future of Industrial AI, ...
About Cedrik Neike
Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board and CEO of Digital Industries at Siemens, participated in a panel discussion on April 1, 2026, with leaders from Pringles to discuss digital transformation in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. Neike described CPG as a large, largely unconsolidated industry worth between 2.5 and 3 trillion dollars, and said it carries "enormous responsibility" because many people depend on it. He stated that "great taste does not need to produce great waste" and advocated for collaboration to produce goods "faster, better, more efficiently, and more sustainably." During the discussion, Neike outlined Siemens' approach to building the "Industrial Metaverse" use case by use case, describing a cycle of collecting machine data, using AI to interpret it, sharing learnings with R&D and manufacturing, and acting on those insights to change formulations and improve machines. He said the objective is to create an "infinite cycle of learning and innovation" and noted that the challenge is how quickly that cycle can be established and strengthened with future use cases.
Transcript (22 segments)
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Interviewer0:07
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?
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Cedrik Neike0:42
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?
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Interviewer1:05
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?
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Cedrik Neike1:15
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.
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Interviewer1:56
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?
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Cedrik Neike2:22
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.
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Interviewer2:55
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?
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Cedrik Neike3:12
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.
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Interviewer3:50
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?
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Cedrik Neike4:18
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.
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Interviewer4:41
has among the highest adoption of 5G
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Cedrik Neike4:43
absolutely 5G in the world it did it also with a few payment systems at the moment that's and now if it does it if India is really crossing the chasm in terms of manufacturing an AI data center I think it could be huge because it's a very IT knowledgeable country.
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Interviewer4:58
do you think there is a huge potential there in terms of crossing the chasm as you put it in AI data centers will that be a big opportunity.
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Cedrik Neike5:05
I mean Siemens has been a huge fan of India for ages we've been listed there for years. But I think that India is really on the verge to leapfrog in terms of manufacturing. It has built the infrastructure it needed because you need infrastructure without infrastructure you cannot do manufacturing. Now it needs to lean in in manufacturing but it needs to be careful not to do the manufacturing of the old but the manufacturing of the future because it's not going to be about cheap labor anymore or it's going to be about how quickly can I adapt and how much data can I use to build something in the most efficient way possible.
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Interviewer5:36
Right. What do you make of criticisms around data centers? A that they don't generate nearly enough jobs and B they guzzle a lot of power and water which could become a challenge pushing up electricity bills for people.
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Cedrik Neike5:52
Like all the things they need to create more value than they consume. And I actually believe that AI could help us save in buildings, in factories so much wastage that it pays more than for the water and the electricity it uses. So the two things we need to do is to make these data centers as efficiently as possible to use as little water and as little energy as possible and to produce sort of valuable outcomes. That's super important.
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Interviewer6:17
Right. You know you recently partnered with Nvidia. What are the first two or three outcomes that you expect in 2026 and what are your investment plans for India?
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Cedrik Neike6:30
So the first thing we're going to do is we want to define manufacturing of the future and we're going to use it in our first factory which we have in Alangan but we're going to use it for example also in Kalva. So the idea of really sort of building a factory with an AI brain which optimizes automatically the new designs, the layouts etc. So it's much faster and much more efficient. The second one we're building the blueprint for the new data centers of the future which of course when we go to India we're going to actually use it also going forward and we've invested a lot in India in the past and we will do so going forward because it's really on the – if you look at electronics, at semiconductors, at cars, at pharmaceutical, India is really catching up and really going onto fast speed and we want to be part of that.
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Interviewer7:13
Right, in terms of where you stand today, there is so much changing every day from an AI perspective, from a geopolitical perspective, from a tariff perspective. Does it make life difficult for you just making decisions factoring in all these disruptions?
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Cedrik Neike7:32
Yes, absolutely. I mean the reality is life of management is hard and life of manufacturing is hard as always has been hard but we need to do two things at the same time. We need the resilience. Things have to become more resilient because we need to keep the lights on. But we need to do it as effectively as possible because actually efficiency pays the bill. So we need to make our investment and our decision as resilient as possible but as cost effective as possible also at the same time.
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Interviewer7:57
Great. And what AI tool are you using these days, Cedrik?
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Cedrik Neike8:00
I'm using I think all of them at the moment. [laughter] I'm using them for planning. I'm using them for optimizing and we're putting quite a bit of effort to train completely new AI models also based on industrial data which is what I'm the most excited about because let me tell you one thing when robots came people were scared, the countries with the most robots have the most manufacturing jobs. AI is coming, people are scared but the countries which will have the most AI models like we're using at the moment will be the most cost competitive. On that note, thank you very much for talking to us. Thank you.