Within our operations– again to make them more productive and efficient. We can use AI to analyze data, such as financial, creating related reports, assisting in product development (e.g. software coding and verification), etc.

Individual employees can also improve their work in more productive and efficient ways. This may be about finding answers to individual questions or about administrative tasks – e.g. automatically creating minutes of meetings or helping in preparing presentations.

Overall, with our leading technologies in electrification and automation, we help all industries run at high performance and become more productive, efficient and sustainable so they can outperform, or as we say – ‘outrun’. AI helps us achieve our mission.  

At ABB, we have an ecosystem approach with AI, where depending on individual cases we either develop things ourselves, partner with other companies or acquire capabilities from outside.

Allow me to illustrate with some ABB wide examples:

‘ABB Genix Industrial IoT and AI suite’combines the power of industrial analytics and artificial intelligence into an enterprise-grade digital platform and suite. The platform includes multiple industrial AI applications for condition monitoring, predictive maintenance and asset management in general. It has capabilities for emission monitoring and optimization. It includes copilot for more intuitive human-like interface, etc.

Robotics is naturally an important application area for artificial intelligence. We have invested $20M in our AI-driven robotics hub in Michigan, USA, to scale innovation and address workforce and productivity challenges in US manufacturing. We have also complemented our inhouse activities with the acquisition of Sevensense, to integrate visual SLAM technology (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) for next generation autonomous mobile robots—boosting spatial awareness and self-navigation capabilities.

We also have a granular approach with artificial intelligence – using AI to help in industry/application/customer specific challenges. One such area, and my last example, is within our marine segment where we have several solutions that are utilizing AI capabilities. Our ABB Ability Marine Pilot Control increases safety of shipping with position keeping, speed control and docking. And Genix powered Oversea is a fleet operating center offered as a service with Wallenius marine, for asset, voyage and sustainability performance.

What role does AI play in your Motion technology?

I am a big believer that in our industry and in Motion we need a balanced approach across traditional and new technologies.

Power electronics, electromagnetics and related control are traditional key technologies within electric motion and they continue to be of fundamental importance to us. Then there are emerging trends in these areas as well: Wide bandgap semiconductors – Silicon carbide, gallium nitride, and so on – are being adopted in an increasing manner in power electronics converters, moreover there are alternative motor topologies and concepts being introduced. And new materials provide new opportunities – also from a sustainability perspective, which is key for us and our customers.

That said, we also need to be proactive with new emerging technologies. One of the biggest themes in this field continues to be the overall digitalization trend. It provides possibilities for asset health and asset performance management in completely new ways, for instance.

Related to digitalization: progresses especially around artificial intelligence – can provide truly significant developments.

In addition, we need to understand that artificial intelligence has a big impact in traditional technologies, too. For example, by supporting the development requirements – such as optimizing designs and even coming with completely new approaches.

Can you give us a practical example?

Let me give two concrete examples related to artificial intelligence applied in Motion:

First – Our Motor Anomaly Detection Tools helps customers avoid sudden motor failures. It uses smart sensors and analytical AI (machine learning) to detect issues early. It thereby improves reliability across the powertrain while reducing maintenance costs.

Second – ABB Specifier is a tool utilizing generative AI to help ABB’s sales professionals to accelerate specification reading process, which has traditionally been a time consuming and error-prone process. The tool thereby helps improve customer experience through faster and better-quality responses. This tool was a winner in the German Innovation Award 2025.

How does AI contribute to increasing efficiency?

This is a very good and important question. Let me elaborate:

Despite the importance of artificial intelligence, let’s remember that in the end AI is an enabler – a very important and effective tool in a toolbox to help our customers run their operations leaner and cleaner – being more productive, more efficient and more sustainable. This is what customers in the end want – also with AI. Our AI activities thereby very much focus on, for example increasing efficiency – in line with the examples that I have highlighted. They help customers in running their operations in a more efficient manner, saving energy, cutting emissions, optimizing asset utilization, etc.

How do you combine AI with IoT and cloud?

These three are linked with each other very closely. Artificial intelligence is an important and effective way of making our IoT solutions even more intelligent and bring added value to our customers. Providing better analytics, better predictions, better troubleshooting & root cause analysis, better information out of data to “close the loop” and improve customer operations with actions.

An important addition to ‘cloud’ element: It is one way of implementing things and has advantages e.g. from the point of view of computation performance and resources. But very importantly we also support on-premise and edge solutions.

Which data is crucial?

Data is important, it is the basis for everything. We need of course data related to our operating area, related to our assets and their environment. We need representative data covering different situations and we need sufficient data to train the models. And it is a big benefit if data is of good quality and e.g. in the same format. Although also in here AI may help – in creating synthetic data, in organizing and managing data, and so on.

How do you ensure the trustworthiness of your models?

This is key to us – as we want to be a trustworthy partner and supplier to our customers also when our solutions include artificial intelligence element.

As a base, we have a disciplined process of developing, testing and verifying things at ABB. Often we pilot the solutions first on a limited scale to gather experience and verify performance. In the case of artificial intelligence especially, we need to pay special attention e.g. to the data that we use in training the models.

Additionally, when we complement our own competence and expertise, we want to partner with the right parties who have high quality technology and offerings – and where possible and feasible in this new area well proven platform solutions.

In many cases artificial intelligence is also used as an assistant – and for example first level support – only so that there is human expertise in the loop, too, to secure things.

How do you support customers with the introduction of AI applications?

As a company we want to provide value for our customers, which in the end means productivity, efficiency and sustainability. As commented earlier, AI is an important tool in the toolbox to help in doing this and achieving these targets. Therefore, I hope that customers in the end do not see AI as a separate item but can enjoy the benefits that it brings to them. There we need to support them by strongly applying AI at the same time. This allows to fully utilize the tremendous opportunities and improvement potential that the technology brings and thereby provide customers with the benefits in a responsible way (considering e.g. reliability, trustworthiness and security).

Where is Industrial AI heading at ABB?

We have a long history of applying artificial intelligence.

For several decades we have, as ABB, been providing solutions to customers that leverage digitalization and analytical AI capabilities. Our approach has always prioritized delivering tangible results to our customers by unlocking the value of data and enabling better decision-making. We will continue on that path, seeing artificial intelligence getting more and more important and increasingly embedded into our offerings/processes/ways of working. We already have deep experience in analytical AI and now – as well as in the future - we are additionally delivering real customer value with the fast-evolving possibilities of generative AI.