Siemens AG, Europe’s largest industrial manufacturing company, has announced $285 million in new investments into its US manufacturing capacity. The funds will go towards two new factories, in Fort Worth, Texas, and Pomona, California, which Siemens says will “more than doubl[e]” its US capacity to supply electrical equipment for markets including AI data centers.
According to Siemens, when factoring in the company’s planned acquisition of software giant Altair — announced last October — the conglomerate’s recent investments into its US operations amount to over $10 billion. That makes the company one of the major players driving a trend of major multinational investment into US manufacturing capacity, a trend that began under the Biden administration and has been picking up even more steam in the very brief time since President Trump has returned to the White House.
In the last couple of weeks alone, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) has announced $100 billion in additional investments into its US operations, while Apple announced plans to invest $500 billion over the next four years into its ability to manufacture in the US, a move the company anticipates will create 20,000 new jobs. While it is difficult at this point to gauge how much the additive manufacturing (AM) industry will benefit from this influx of capital, Siemens, TSMC, and Apple, at least, all have extensive histories with AM.
In a press release about Siemens’ latest multi-hundred-million dollar investment into its US operations, Roland Busch, president and CEO of Siemens AG, said, “The industrial tech sector is the basis to boost manufacturing in America and there’s no company more prepared than Siemens to make this future a reality for customers from small and medium sized enterprises to industrial giants. We believe in the innovation and strength of America’s industry. That’s why Siemens has invested over $90 billion in the country in the last 20 years. This investment will bring this number to over $100 billion. We are bringing more jobs, more technology and a boost to America’s AI capabilities.”
The scale of Siemens’ investment into its US production capacity is precisely the sort of development that makes the AI data center boom such a compelling catalyst for the growth of American manufacturing in general, and the growth of US AM industry, in particular. I wrote about this trajectory in the recently published report for AM Research, “AM for Data Centers: a 3D Printing Market Opportunity,” which can be purchased here.
As the AM industry matures, it is becoming clearer that the industry’s continued growth depends on selling the technology in terms of applications, more so than on selling the technology, itself. One of the most important assets for achieving that objective is information on what’s driving the largest-scale activity in the broader manufacturing sector, as a whole.
It is fortunate for the AM industry that, no matter what the specific vertical is, the manufacturing sector at-large seems to be accelerating its move in a direction that will be evermore conducive to selling AM applications. Along these lines, it seems likely that the problems that manufacturers generally face may only benefit the much smaller niche within the overall sector that is dedicated to AM. For instance, even the persistent uncertainty that the manufacturing sector faces may be a tailwind for increased adoption of AM applications, as suppliers are forced to take more seriously the idea that they should be increasing their ability to produce goods on-demand, and as close as possible to the point-of-need.
Images courtesy of Siemens
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