n NEWS February 2026 www.drivesncontrols.com 10 SIEMENS AND THE CHIP-MAKER NVIDIA have expanded their strategic partnership to bring AI (artificial intelligence) into the real world. Together, they aim to develop industrial and physical AI systems that will bring AI-driven innovation to every industry and industrial workflow, as well as accelerating each others’ operations. They say they are reinventing the entire industrial chain, from design and engineering to manufacturing, production, operations and supply chains. Nvidia will provide the AI infrastructure, simulation libraries, models, frameworks and blueprints, while Siemens will commit hundreds of its industrial AI experts, as well as its hardware and software capabilities. The development was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in the US, where Siemens’ Siemens and Nvidia build Industrial AI OS ‘to reinvent entire industrial chain’ WEG HAS COMMISSIONED a facility in Portugal for testing large motors and inverters that is intended to expand its operations and influence across Europe. The laboratory will act as a showcase, with WEG’s customers being invited to view products in operation, and being tested. About six years ago, WEG decided to expand from its original Portuguese base in Maia, near Porto, after identifying a critical need to enhance its inspection processes and improve its production capacity. This led to the establishment of the new lab in Santo Tirso, co-located with a 22,680m2 factory where the company is manufacturing MV and HV drives and motors, as well as LV electrical panels. WEG has invested €23.5m in the site. The new lab, which commenced operations in 2024, is one of WEG’s most advanced test facilities globally. It has a 410m2 test area, as well as 82m2 of offices. The lab also has 560m2 of “technical areas” dedicated to medium- and low-voltage automation and control, and 525m2 to electrical machinery. The facility can test motors weighing up to 43 tonnes. In future, this could be extended up to 63 tonnes. The site can test the performance of both low- and highvoltage equipment up to 15kV, and perform direct load tests on motors and inverters up to 7.5MW. The facility can also perform string tests on complete drivetrains including transformers, inverters and motors, as well as special tests such as high-voltage and sound-level testing of larger machines. The lab is equipped for advanced vibration testing and analysis to ensure compliance with international standards. It can also assess water-cooled systems and lubrication systems. Around 80% of the investment in the new facility has been supplied from within the WEG group – most of the MV equipment, UPSs, PLCs and control systems were procured internally. The laboratory has been designed with future expansion in mind, with space for new test platforms. For example, WEG is developing a new dual-frequency testing method, and is preparing to address emerging areas such as testing battery storage systems and EV chargers. It is also preparing to assess next-generation motor technologies. president and CEO, Roland Busch, explained: “Together, we are building the Industrial AI operating system – redefining how the physical world is designed, built, and run – to scale AI and create real-world impact. “By combining Nvidia’s leadership in accelerated computing and AI platforms, with Siemens’ leading hardware, software, industrial AI and data, we’re empowering customers to develop products faster with the most comprehensive digital twins, adapt production in real time, and accelerate technologies from chips to AI factories.” “Generative AI and accelerated computing have ignited a new industrial revolution, transforming digital twins from passive simulations into the active intelligence of the physical world,” added Nvidia’s founder and CEO, Jensen Huang. “Our partnership with Siemens fuses the world’s leading industrial software with Nvidia’s full-stack AI platform to close the gap between ideas and reality – empowering industries to simulate complex systems in software, then seamlessly automate and operate them in the physical world.” Siemens and Nvidia will work together to build AI-accelerated industrial systems covering the entire lifecycle of products and production, enabling faster innovation, continuous optimisation, and more resilient, sustainable manufacturing. They are aiming to build the world’s first fully AIdriven, adaptive manufacturing sites globally, starting this year with Siemens Electronics’ factory in Erlangen, Germany. Using an “AI brain” powered by software-defined automation and industrial operations software, combined with Nvidia’s Omniverse libraries and AI infrastructure, factories will be able to analyse digital twins continuously, test improvements virtually, and turn validated insights into operational changes on the shopfloor. This will result in faster, more reliable decision-making from design to deployment – boosting productivity, while cutting commissioning times and risk. Several customers are already evaluating some of these capabilities, including Foxconn, Hyundai, Kion Group and PepsiCo. Siemens will accelerate GPU performance across its simulation portfolio and expand support for Nvidia’s CUDA-X libraries and AI physics models, allowing users to run larger, more accurate simulations faster. Building on this, the companies plan to move towards generative simulation by using Nvidia’s PhysicsNeMo and open models to provide autonomous digital twins that deliver real-time engineering design and autonomous optimisation. Siemens’ president and CEO Roland Busch (left) with Nvidia’s president and CEO Jensen Huang at CES 2026 WEG’s Portuguese test lab will act as a showcase for Europe
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ0NzM=