Schneider Electric has formed a strategic collaboration with NVIDIA and HPE to accelerate the use of Physical AI in process and heavy industries. The partners are framing the effort around a practical gap: much of the current Physical AI discussion centers on robots, humanoids and autonomous machines, while continuous process operations depend on reliability, safety, cybersecurity and energy efficiency.
As an initial demonstration, the companies are introducing Industrial AI Agents at the Edge. The solution combines HPE Private Cloud AI, co-engineered with NVIDIA as part of the HPE AI Factory with NVIDIA portfolio, with Schneider Electric's operational technology expertise. The goal is to let industrial organizations deploy and scale AI applications at the industrial edge, bringing real-time intelligence closer to critical operations while keeping control over sensitive data, security and costs.
Edge deployment addresses three barriers
The partners say industrial organizations still face obstacles when scaling AI across operational environments, including data governance, cybersecurity, operational performance and deployment requirements. Keeping AI at the edge is intended to address three specific constraints. First, critical operational data may be too valuable, sensitive or regulated to move beyond operational boundaries; HPE Private Cloud AI is presented as a secure foundation that lets organizations deploy agents near operations while maintaining control and compliance. Second, greater connectivity can widen the attack surface across industrial and critical infrastructure; processing data close to its source is intended to reduce that exposure. Third, cloud-based inference, data transfer and token-related costs can rise as AI use expands; edge deployment is positioned as a way to reduce some of those costs and give organizations more control over where and how workloads run.
Single environment for agent management
Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure Industrial Insights apps are intended to let customers deploy, manage and govern multiple Industrial AI Agents through one environment. The company says this can simplify lifecycle management and security oversight while maintaining control of critical operations and infrastructure. The first agents focus on operational technology monitoring, cybersecurity and energy optimization. The announcement points to CMPC Chile as an industrial environment where practical application can already be seen.
The first three agents
- OT Monitoring Agents: These agents are designed to combine real-time operational data, equipment configurations, process topology, alarms, maintenance history and engineering context to build an understanding of the physical state of operations. They identify emerging issues, assess likely operational impact, recommend or initiate corrective actions, and verify whether an intervention produces the expected physical result.
- Cybersecurity Agents: These correlate network activity, control-system behavior, asset configurations, operational events and process context to detect abnormal conditions. They assess potential effects on industrial operations, recommend or execute response measures, and validate that systems have returned to a secure and stable state.
- Energy Optimization Agents: These integrate process data, energy consumption patterns, equipment performance, operating conditions and production requirements to understand how energy is used. They identify optimization opportunities, recommend or implement adjustments, and verify the resulting effect on energy efficiency, operational performance and sustainability outcomes.
CMPC Chile provides an OTMS foundation
CMPC Chile, part of Empresas CMPC, has used Schneider Electric's OTMS in production for three years across continuous pulp and paper operations. OTMS gives teams a unified view of control systems, servers, workstations and switches, helping specialists identify emerging issues earlier, diagnose problems faster and set clearer maintenance priorities. The partners describe this deployment as evidence of OTMS as a control-system monitoring solution and as an operational foundation for future Industrial AI Agents. They see potential to accelerate investigation and decision-making while keeping people in control of critical actions.
What the partners say
Gwenaelle Huet, executive vice president of industrial automation at Schneider Electric, said the next generation of industrial innovation will be driven by intelligence embedded directly in operations. She said Schneider sees a significant opportunity to apply Physical AI to the industrial systems that power critical industries, not only to autonomous machines, and that the collaboration brings together automation, AI and edge-computing expertise to help customers turn operational data into action. The stated aims include improving resilience, efficiency, cybersecurity and sustainability while laying a foundation for more autonomous operations.
NVIDIA's Sri Kodali said industrial operations generate large amounts of data, but converting that data into action remains a major challenge. He described the combination of NVIDIA Nemotron open AI models, HPE Private Cloud AI as a turnkey AI factory solution, Schneider Electric's industrial expertise and the OTMS platform as a way for Industrial AI Agents to monitor, reason about and optimize operations in real time. HPE's Alexia Clements said industrial customers want to use AI while protecting sensitive data and critical systems, and that HPE Private Cloud AI is intended to bring AI closer to where data is generated and decisions are made.
Matías Jory of CMPC's industrial operations vice-presidency said OTMS has improved visibility into the health and availability of control systems over the past three years. He said early issue identification is critical in continuous operations and that AI Agents could build on this foundation to help specialists investigate faster and move from insight to action while people retain control of critical decisions.
The companies present the collaboration as a foundation for a next generation of industrial operations in which intelligent systems continuously monitor, reason about and optimize performance. Over time, they expect these capabilities to help automate the automation and support safer, more efficient and increasingly autonomous operations across process industries. The announcement describes an initial demonstration and a direction for broader use; the three-year CMPC Chile foundation concerns OTMS, while wider agent deployment and results are presented as future potential.