Microsoft, Hitachi Sign $18.9B Generative AI Partnership

Hitachi will leverage Microsoft’s AI and cloud services through a multiyear, multibillion-dollar partnership.

Under the three-year deal, Hitachi will integrate Microsoft cloud services, including the Azure OpenAI Service, into its digital solutions business, Lumada.

Lumada will gain access to OpenAI models through the Azure service, which will aid it in building customers' digital solutions.

Lumada will also have access to GitHub Copilot to assist developers with coding tasks and productivity tools through Copilot for Microsoft 365.

The companies estimate the joint generative AI efforts will generate $18.9 billion in revenues for Lumada in 2024 alone.

Hitachi’s Lumada is already using Microsoft’s Generative AI for JP1 Cloud Services to accelerate IT response times.

“Hitachi and Microsoft have already been working on a variety of co-creation projects including the development of next-generation digital solutions for the manufacturing and logistics fields and the development of a field-extended metaverse that runs on Microsoft Teams,” said Keiji Kojima, Hitachi’s president and CEO. “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, and by applying generative AI, to improve the productivity of frontline workers, which will become even more important in the future.”

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Hitachi itself will also leverage Microsoft’s Copilot solutions to improve worker productivity. It plans to train staff to use generative AI solutions, including Microsoft’s suite of services.

The Japanese company will also use Azure OpenAI Service to use multimodal foundation models like GPT-4o to improve its customer service efforts.

The partnership will also involve joint cloud-focused projects utilizing generative AI for data center security and sustainability.

Hitachi’s Railway business already runs a generative AI-powered predictive maintenance tool on Microsoft Azure.

“We are entering a new era of AI with the promise to deliver transformative business outcomes across every role and industry,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chair and CEO. “Our expanded partnership with Hitachi will bring together the power of the Microsoft Cloud, including Microsoft Copilot, with Hitachi’s industry expertise to improve the productivity of 270,000 Hitachi employees and help address customers’ biggest challenges, including sustainability.”