Energy and manufacturing leaders are in a high-stakes race. Production targets are rising, assets are becoming more complex, and expectations around efficiency, safety, and cost control keep pushing teams beyond what human capacity can deliver.
Many organizations are turning to AI agents to close that gap, but leaders struggle to create a unified, trustworthy, AI-ready data foundation. Without it, AI can’t scale, and the gap remains. To get to that data foundation, companies feel they either have to choose a generic ecosystem or build more silos with purpose-built point solutions.
Cognite and Microsoft are removing that barrier. Together, we provide an open, industrial, enterprise‑grade AI foundation that helps organizations unlock faster insights, scale digital labor, and realize millions in operational savings.
The Challenge: Realizing AI’s untapped potential
Industrial AI holds enormous promise, and to succeed, enterprises need an open architecture that:
- unifies fragmented data
- makes data AI-ready across IT, OT, and engineering domains
- delivers data securely to the tools and teams that need it
The reality is very different. Operational, engineering, and business data remain scattered across formats - from P&IDs and 3D models to sensor telemetry and production logs. As a result, many organizations become stuck in Pilot Purgatory: they succeed with an AI use case at a single facility, but cannot scale that solution across assets and geographies. Without a shared, AI‑ready data foundation, each project becomes a one‑off build, insights remain siloed, and enterprise-wide AI transformation stalls.
Cognite and Microsoft eliminate these barriers with a single, open industrial data foundation. Microsoft Fabric provides the enterprise-scale analytics backbone, while Cognite contributes deep industrial data context - enabling real-time operational visibility and a scalable path to industrial AI.
The Journey: Moving from idea to production in weeks
Cognite and Microsoft accelerate end-to-end transformation by connecting real-time operational reality to broader business strategy. Acting as the central nervous system, Cognite transforms fragmented and unstructured data and complex IT, OT, and ET sources such as engineering drawings, 3D models, and sensor telemetry into a living Industrial Knowledge Graph. End users can access industrial data from the tools they use most, within the workflows they already use - without creating another tool, workflow, or silo.
Additionally, any insights from one workflow feed back into the Knowledge Graph, enriching all workflows and ensuring everyone has the most up-to-date data when they need it. In other words, solving a problem in one tool solves it everywhere. This architecture allows leaders to move from isolated site pilots to an enterprise model.
Solve a problem once, and solve it everywhere.
By fusing industrial field data with business analytics, the partnership delivers field-to-boardroom intelligence, ensuring that enterprise decisions are grounded in trustworthy, real-time information.
Industrial organizations are dealing with a tremendous amount of scale, both in data and processes. Working with Microsoft, we’re merging industrial AI and enterprise AI in a way that truly transforms the value customers get from the data they already have.
- Cognite Field CTO, Jason Schern
A New Workforce Model: Human + Agent Teams
This unified foundation powers a new model of digital labor. Customers can access Cognite AI agents directly through the Microsoft Marketplace- agents like:
- Industrial Data Scout, which rapidly analyzes complex asset data
- Work Package Generator, which reduces four hours of manual planning to just four clicks
“These are agents already delivering value,” Schern said. “We’re bringing new insights and new ways of working to customers in the field, the plant, and the shop floor in ways that have never been done before -and productivity is going up and up.”
Microsoft Copilot acts as the central orchestrator, enabling agent-to-agent collaboration without losing flexibility. When a user asks a complex question, Copilot routes it to Cognite’s specialized AI agents for a deep-dive analysis of P&IDs, 3D models, and telemetry. Leaders can use the answers to make enterprise decisions based on fact, and because it’s fully interoperable with existing data warehouses and tools like Microsoft Teams, pilots and solutions can scale instantly from one asset to the entire enterprise.
It’s a powerful synergy with Cognite. Cognite grounds agents in a trustworthy, real-time view of operations, helping customers realize transformation faster than ever.
- Microsoft Global Partner Director Joe Kurhajec
Unified architecture also empowers industrial teams to build, manage, and deploy their own AI agents, scaling solutions across operations with a fraction of the usual implementation effort.
Our partnership with Microsoft provides a fast and trustworthy path for scaling industrial AI, reducing deployment time by 60–80%.
- Cognite Field CTO, Jason Schern
The Impact: A 465% return on investment
By unifying industrial AI across operations, Cognite helps teams deploy AI faster, scale digital labor, and boost productivity where it matters. Organizations embracing this approach - which Microsoft calls Frontier Firms -are agile, open, and data-sovereign, scaling intelligence across 50+ facilities in under 2 years.
According to the 2026 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study, asset-heavy organizations deploying Cognite see:
- 465% ROI, with payback in less than six months
- $14.5 million in reduced unplanned downtime
- $10.7 million from production optimization
- $10.5 million from improved onsite workforce efficiency
By combining Cognite with our scalable Azure services, we accelerate the development and scale of industrial AI solutions, helping organizations realize millions in operational savings
- Microsoft Global Partner Director, Joe Kurhajec