Schneider Electric, AVEVA and ETAP have announced their membership in the Alliance for OpenUSD (Universal Scene Description). The companies join industry pioneers including NVIDIA, Pixar, Adobe and Autodesk in shaping the future of interoperable digital twins and simulation-ready (SimReady) 3D assets. The announcement was unveiled during Schneider Electric’s Innovation Summit North America in Las Vegas, convening more than 2,500 business leaders and market innovators to accelerate practical solutions for a more resilient, affordable and intelligent energy future.
The announcement reinforces the companies’ commitment to advancing open standards for industrial simulation, collaborative design, and Gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure. OpenUSD is a high-performance, extensible framework and ecosystem that enables seamless interoperability between software tools and data types for building virtual worlds and advancing industrial digitalization.
Joining the Alliance signals Schneider Electric, AVEVA, and ETAP’s deepened alignment with NVIDIA’s vision for scalable, physically accurate, and real-time digital twin environments, engineered to simulate buildings, manufacturing factories, data centers, and AI infrastructure systems of the future. Organizations are rapidly adopting NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to develop digital twin solutions to model projects, digitalize processes, and design systems to the highest standards of performance, sustainability and energy efficiency.
Advancing open standards for industrial simulation, collaborative design, and AI infrastructure systems
By adopting OpenUSD as a shared standard, the companies are working closely with NVIDIA to unlock new possibilities for:
· SimReady Asset Development: Creating interoperable, simulation-ready models of physical infrastructure components, like power and cooling systems, that can be orchestrated within industrial digital twins that leverage NVIDIA Omniverse libraries.
● Digital Twin Collaboration: Enabling unified views of complex systems such as data centers, energy grids, and industrial facilities that are integrated with Schneider Electric’s platforms like EcoStruxure, AVEVA and ETAP. The three companies’ multi-domain expertise across buildings, data centers, factories, plants, grids, and infrastructure offers advanced digital twin simulations for an array of industries.
● Accelerated AI Infrastructure Deployment: Leveraging the NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint and NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to codesign gigawatt-scale AI factories with reduced risk and faster time-to-market.
Schneider Electric’s SimReady assets are used alongside applications with integrated NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, enabling physically accurate, detailed simulations across industries, and accelerating digital twin development. From manufacturers optimizing assembly lines, to data center operators enhancing AI factory design and operations. The adoption of OpenUSD and digital twins is driving improved energy efficiency, sustainability, and resiliency.
For example, by using AI factory digital twins, data center operators can model and manage physical infrastructure systems that simulate thermal behavior, power distribution, and airflow to optimize cooling efficiency and reliability.
“OpenUSD is more than a file format, it’s a virtual bridge between industries,” said Jim Simonelli, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Data Centers at Schneider Electric. “Joining the Alliance allows us to contribute to a shared digital language that empowers collaboration, simulation, and innovation across the AI ecosystem. It’s a natural extension of our work with NVIDIA, allowing us to build AI infrastructure that’s not only powerful, but intelligent, sustainable, and future-ready.”
“To efficiently design and operate complex systems like AI factories, industries need a robust, simulation-ready foundation,” said Rev Lebaredian, Vice President of Omniverse and simulation technology at NVIDIA. “Schneider Electric's expertise in energy management, hardware and software, combined with NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, will accelerate the creation of the AI factories and intelligent grids of the future, paving the way for a new era of AI-driven efficiency and sustainability.”
Continued innovation, partnership, and impact Schneider Electric, AVEVA and ETAP joining the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) marks a pivotal moment in the companies’ partnership with NVIDIA and builds upon milestones the companies have shared throughout the years to accelerate digital twin and AI factory development. The companies are co-developing reference architectures, integrated infrastructure and software solutions that will power and cool the next generation of AI factories, and working on projects that leverage NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to simulate and improve energy efficiency in real-world environments.
At GTC DC, Schneider Electric was named as a power, cooling, and energy technology partner contributing to the NVIDIA AI factory Research Center in Manassas, Virginia. Powered by the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, the center was built to support breakthroughs in generative AI, scientific computing and advanced manufacturing and to serve as a foundation for the Omniverse DSX Blueprint for gigascale AI factories. In March 2025, ETAP by Schneider Electric unveiled a cutting-edge digital twin that can accurately design and simulate the power needs of AI factories.
