How Siemens Deployed One of the First Industrial AI Agents

Siemens has unveiled an industrial engineering agent called Eigen, which the company says will move industrial AI from assistance to industrial execution. 

Unveiled at Hannover Messe 2026 in Germany, the industrial AI product is among the first commercially available AI systems that can plan and execute industrial automation engineering tasks. 

This product launch forms part of Siemens' €1bn (US$1.76bn) investment in industrial AI.​​​​​​​

The Eigen AI Agent

Unlike AI tools and co-pilots that generate advice, the Eigen Engineering Agent operates within real engineering systems to plan, execute and validate tasks.

It understands its projects, writes automation code, configures systems and iterates until pre-defined performance benchmarks are met. 

Vasi Philomin, Executive Vice President of Data and AI at Siemens, says: “The real big shift here is that we are moving away from AI that supports, to AI that actually completes work end-to-end and we're doing this in the context of real world engineering systems.”

By automating repetitive tasks and delivering validated, ready-to-use results, the Eigen Engineering Agent aims to allow engineers to focus on higher-impact, system-level challenges.

Deploying industrial AI

The Eigen Engineering Agent is production-ready and available to the more than 600,000 users of Siemens' Totally Integrated Automation Engineering platform, TIA Portal.

It is part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio and is already digitally available. Pilot customers included Austrian ANDRITZ Metals, China's CASMT and US-based Prism Systems.

Kevin Firouzian, Head of Global Strategy & Partnerships at CASMT, says: “This is an AI assistant truly built for industrial automation.​​​​​​​

“For our electromechanical braking line, the Eigen Engineering Agent transformed a complex, multi-discipline challenge into a conversational workflow. It simplified setup, reduced specialist handoffs, accelerated delivery and made debugging significantly faster.”

CASMT is a Chinese based company that provides AI-driven industrial automation solutions, primarily focused on new energy vehicles. 

John Elias, President at Prism Systems, says: “Tools like ChatGPT showed us how powerful AI can be and engineers quickly recognised their potential.​​​​​​​

“The challenge has been bringing that capability into real industrial workflows. Siemens' latest tools help close that gap, allowing us to apply AI in a way that truly supports engineering and automation.”

US-based Prism Systems offer advanced and autonomous technology in the industrial, marine, manufacturing and IT markets.

Engineers' biggest challenges

In a post on LinkedIn, Roland Busch, CEO of Siemens said: “At Hannover Messe today, I became a running reporter and asked engineers about their biggest challenges.

Roland said the issues faced were: “Repetitive mass operations. Documentation searches. Bulk engineering. Parameter changes across drive systems.”​​​​​​​

He said the Eigen Engineering Agent is designed for exactly those challenges, offering “up to 50% higher engineering efficiency, two to five times faster execution, up to 80% higher solution quality”.

He added it was “the first true AI colleague for automation engineers. Plans, writes, validates, delivers, production-ready, inside TIA Portal”.

Industrial AI in manufacturing

McKinsey has previously argued that AI is expected to herald a new age of efficiency in operations. McKinsey argues that in manufacturing and supply chain alone, it could reduce expenses by up to US$500bn.

Siemens' new technology, which is one of the first commercial deployments, could signal an acceleration in industrial deployments of AI, with many companies now looking to bring the technology onto the shop floor to reduce expenses. 

A McKinsey survey from 2025 found that 93% of over 100 manufacturing COOs plan to spend more on digital and AI, with one third intending to spend 5% of the cost of goods over the next five years.