Dive Brief:

• Schneider Electric is releasing what it says is a first-of-its-kind AI-powered platform for energy, power and building systems, the company said at its Innovation Summit North America last week.
• EcoStruxure Foresight Operation blends machine learning, predictive analytics and fine-tuned controls to reduce engineering workloads up to 40% and boost operational efficiency up to 50%, Schneider says.
• Schneider says it will make the platform available to customers in beta mode “in the coming months” ahead of a wider release beginning in the third quarter of 2026.

Dive Insight:

Schneider’s existing EcoStruxure platform helps facility operators across a variety of industries and geographies improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact, the company says.

Its website features stories from a data center operator in Norway that improved its uninterrupted power supply system’s efficiency by 2% and an office high-rise in India that gained a single-console view into its HVAC, utilities, lighting and building security systems.

Schneider executives say the new AI-powered EcoStruxure platform promises even greater operational improvements. 

Likening the platform to “an intelligent operational assistant that never sleeps,” Manish Kumar, executive vice president of digital energy at Schneider Electric, said in a statement that EcoStruxure Foresight Operation “unifies energy, power and building domains for supervisory and control, which means systems finally speak the same language.”

That’s a step change from a status quo, where building and utility systems operate in separately controlled siloes, Schneider says. Those siloes can lead to problems like voltage imbalances that risk damaging equipment. Given how much energy the typical building wastes, having systems working in siloes isn’t helpful, Schneider says. The U.S. Department of Energy pegs average building energy waste at 30%.

It’s even more important that building systems operate seamlessly and efficiently in high-demand and mission-critical facilities like data centers and hospitals, Schneider says. The company claims facilities with EcoStruxure Foresight Operation can deploy large building systems faster — halving engineering time and reducing large systems’ setup time by 500 hours — and increase uptime during operations with AI diagnostics that can resolve “interrelated electrical and mechanical issues” 90% faster. 

EcoStruxure Foresight Operation hits the market as Schneider deepens its exposure to the fast-growing AI data center industry. Data centers have been the biggest driver of Schneider’s revenue growth for several quarters running, and executives on recent earnings calls have sounded optimistic that will continue.

One Schneider Electric installation partner said as much in an interview with CRN last week.

“AI cannot continue without hundreds of data centers being built in the next five years,” said Brad Bailleaux, vice president of sales for Lockstep Technology Group. “In the next three to five years, we expect our Schneider Electric business to grow tenfold.”

Bailleaux also said EcoStruxure Foresight Operation would more broadly be a “huge game-changer” for end-users, including middle-market companies without the vast facilities management footprint of the Fortune 1000.

“AI and software can now help clients determine the return on investment of EcoStruxure including the wattage, usage and the return on the energy costs. Today it takes three different individuals to create that report,” he said.