Schneider Electric To Acquire Cognite For Its’ Cutting-Edge Technology
Schneider Electric To Acquire Cognite For Its’ Cutting-Edge Technology
Publish Date: 2026-07-03 13:10:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
Knowledge Graphs are Key to Agentic AI
Cognite
On June 30th, Schneider Electric, a global leader in energy management and automation, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cognite. Cognite provides an Agentic AI Data Platform for the factory floor. This is a cash transaction valued at $3.1 billion.
The company, founded in 2017 and headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, reported revenue exceeding $170 million in 2025. That means the acquisition cost is 18.2 times revenues!
What could explain such a high price? Cognite is growing fast; Its annual recurring revenue bookings are growing 36%. But it is Cognite’s technology driving this growth. And Schneider Electric’s user base can help further accelerate growth.
Celanese Implements the Cognite Platform
I saw a presentation last year by Celanese, a global chemical manufacturer, about their use of Cognite. This is still the single best example I have come across of a company employing agentic AI and copilots at scale.
During COVID-19, Celanese began to consider the need for a digital transformation. When they began considering a platform to detect and respond to equipment anomalies, they realized those capabilities would support safety, improve product quality, and production optimization. The ROI associated with that could be massive.
If an asset issue was detected, resolving it could involve multiple applications used by multiple people, who see different information, enter different data, bounce emails and texts back and forth, and move information from one place to another. One event could create massive churn.
A person at a chemical manufacturing facility is involved in all kinds of processes. They prepare equipment for maintenance, perform isolation (disconnecting a piece of equipment from the chemical flow by closing valves), review quality or reliability metrics, and conduct rounds.
The director of digital manufacturing said, “We needed to model the data in a way that we can do simple…
