Nvidia and a broad ecosystem of industrial partners are showcasing the latest advances in AI-driven manufacturing at Hannover Messe 2026, highlighting how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape engineering, factory operations, and robotics deployment at scale.
The event, running April 20-24 in Hannover, Germany, brings together companies including Siemens, SAP, ABB, Dassault Systèmes, Microsoft and Wandelbots, all demonstrating how accelerated computing, simulation, and AI agents are being applied across industrial workflows.
The displays reflect a wider shift taking place across manufacturing, where companies are increasingly turning to AI to address tighter production cycles, operational efficiency pressures, and ongoing shortages of skilled labor.
Industrial AI infrastructure takes center stage
A central theme at this year’s event is the growing importance of large-scale AI infrastructure to support industrial applications.
Among the projects highlighted is the Industrial AI Cloud, described as one of Europe’s largest AI “factories”, built in Germany by Deutsche Telekom using Nvidia infrastructure. The platform is designed to provide a secure and sovereign foundation for running AI workloads across manufacturing and supply chains.
Companies including Agile Robots, Siemens, SAP, PhysicsX and Wandelbots are demonstrating how the platform can support applications ranging from real-time simulation and AI physics to factory-scale digital twins and software-defined robotics.
To support demand for compute, hardware providers such as Dell Technologies, IBM, Lenovo and PNY are also presenting Nvidia-accelerated systems spanning edge devices through to data center deployments.
AI transforms engineering and simulation
Another focus area is the use of AI in engineering design and simulation. Software providers including Cadence, Dassault Systèmes, Siemens and Synopsys are integrating Nvidia technologies such as CUDA-X, Omniverse libraries and Nemotron models into their platforms.
These integrations are intended to enable real-time, physics-based simulation and more automated, agent-driven engineering workflows.
Digital twins also feature prominently across multiple demonstrations. Companies are showing how virtual models of factories and industrial assets can be used to simulate operations, test scenarios and optimize performance before changes are implemented in the physical environment.
ABB, for example, is demonstrating how its Genix Industrial IoT and AI Suite uses Nvidia Omniverse and Microsoft Azure services to provide contextual insights into asset performance and accelerate root-cause analysis.
AI agents move onto the factory floor
Beyond simulation, Nvidia and its partners are emphasizing the role of AI agents in real-world production environments.
These systems combine data from cameras, sensors and operational systems to analyze factory activity in real time and take action where needed.
Invisible AI is launching what it describes as a Vision Execution System, designed to monitor and analyze production cycles using AI agents. The system is already being deployed in automotive manufacturing environments, including at Toyota facilities.
Tulip Interfaces is also demonstrating its Factory Playback system, which synchronizes operational data into a searchable timeline. The company says Terex expects to achieve an estimated 3 percent increase in yield and a 10 percent reduction in rework using the platform.
Toward autonomous industrial robotics
Several demonstrations at Hannover Messe also point to the growing role of AI in robotics, particularly in enabling more autonomous systems.
At a Siemens electronics factory in Erlangen, Germany, a wheeled humanoid robot developed by Humanoid has completed a proof-of-concept logistics deployment using Nvidia’s Jetson Thor edge AI module. The company says its simulation-first development approach reduced development time from up to two years to seven months.
Elsewhere, Hexagon Robotics is using Nvidia’s physical AI stack to accelerate robot training and deployment, with its AEON system expected to perform assembly operations at a BMW plant in Leipzig.
According to Vasi Philomin, executive vice president and head of data and AI at Siemens, the shift toward AI-enabled engineering is becoming increasingly necessary.
“As demand outpaces capacity, automation engineering is becoming a bottleneck,” Philomin said.
“Manufacturers are under pressure to deliver increasingly complex systems faster, while skilled engineering resources remain constrained.”
The breadth of demonstrations at Hannover Messe suggests that AI is moving beyond experimentation and into core industrial processes.
While many of the systems on display are still in early deployment phases, they point toward a future in which AI is embedded across the full manufacturing lifecycle – from design and simulation to production and operations.
