Brad Smith Vice Chair and President at Microsoft | Official website
Hitachi Ltd. (TSE:6501) and Microsoft Corp. announced a projected multibillion-dollar collaboration over the next three years aimed at accelerating social innovation with generative AI. This strategic alliance will propel the growth of Hitachi's Lumada business, targeting a revenue of 2.65 trillion yen (18.9 billion USD) in FY2024, while enhancing operational efficiency for Hitachi Group’s 270,000 employees.
Under this agreement, Hitachi will integrate various Microsoft technologies—including Azure Open AI Service, Dynamics 365, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and GitHub Copilot—into its Lumada solutions. These integrations aim to provide innovative solutions across industries such as energy and mobility to deliver better outcomes for businesses and society.
“Hitachi has been driving transformation by applying AI across the Hitachi Group to improve productivity and will invest 300 billion yen (2.1 billion USD) in GenAI to capture new growth opportunities in FY2024," said Keiji Kojima, president and CEO of Hitachi. "Under this new agreement, we are excited to further accelerate social innovation by expanding our efforts to social infrastructure areas such as energy and mobility."
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, stated: “We are entering a new era of AI with the promise to deliver transformative business outcomes across every role and industry. Our expanded partnership with Hitachi will bring together the power of the Microsoft Cloud—including Microsoft Copilot—with Hitachi’s industry expertise.”
The collaboration also involves training more than 50,000 "GenAI Professionals" on advanced AI skills through programs provided by both companies.
Hitachi’s Generative AI Center and Microsoft will work together to enhance operational efficiency within the Hitachi Group using tools like Copilot for Microsoft 365 and GitHub Copilot. Additionally, Azure OpenAI Service will be utilized to improve customer service.
In terms of application development, Hitachi plans to combine Azure OpenAI Service with its systems development expertise to maintain high quality and improve productivity for mission-critical system development.
For predictive maintenance in rail operations, Hitachi Rail is leveraging GenAI to enhance equipment monitoring and forecast accuracy using a cloud-based platform on Microsoft Azure.
Furthermore, Hitachi is incorporating generative AI into its Lumada solutions. For instance, Microsoft's Generative AI is being used in JP1 Cloud Services to accelerate response times in IT departments.
Joint projects between the two companies will focus on sustainable growth initiatives such as reducing CO2 emissions from data centers starting with a project in Europe.
