Siemens AG is buying software developer Altair Engineering for a reported $10.6 billion, aiming to strengthen its portfolio of technologies for industrial design and simulation. Detroit-based Altair designs computational science, simulation, and analysis software used by designers in automotive, aerospace, and other major manufacturing sectors to simulate how product designs might work in actual use. Its products are important source technologies for artificial intelligence programs.
For Siemens, adding Altair to its industrial automation portfolio will strengthen its resources for linking hardware and software, and digitalizing manufacturing.
“This strategic investment aligns with our commitment to accelerate the digital and sustainability transformations of our customers by combining the real and digital worlds. The addition of Altair’s capabilities in simulation, high performance computing, data science, and artificial intelligence together with Siemens Xcelerator will create the world's most complete AI-powered design and simulation portfolio,” stated Siemens president and CEO Roland Busch.
“It is a logical next step,” he added: “we have been building our leadership in industrial software for the last 15 years, most recently, democratizing the benefits of data and AI for entire industries.”
Siemens called the Altair simulation portfolio “highly complementary,” notably for mechanical and electromagnetic engineering. Adding the new capabilities will enhance Siemens’ “comprehensive Digital Twin to deliver a full-suite, physics-based, simulation portfolio as part of Siemens Xcelerator.
Also, Altair's data science and AI-powered simulation capabilities will grant simulation expertise to a wide range of users – “engineers to generalists” – to shorten product design and development.
The buyer also predicted that Altair's data science capabilities will expand Siemens' industrial domain expertise in product lifecycle and manufacturing processes.
