Siemens splashes out $10 billion to buy Altair

Siemens says the acquisition strengthens its position as a leading technology company and its leadership in industrial software.

The transaction will increase Siemens' digital business revenue by 8%, adding 600 million Euro to its digital business revenue of 7.3 billion Euro as reported in fiscal year 2023. 

“Acquiring Altair marks a significant milestone for Siemens. This strategic investment aligns with our commitment to accelerate the digital and sustainability transformations of our customers by combining the real and digital worlds. The addition of Altair’s capabilities in simulation, high performance computing, data science, and artificial intelligence together with Siemens Xcelerator will create the world's most complete AI-powered design and simulation portfolio,” said Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG. “It is a logical next step: we have been building our leadership in industrial software for the last 15 years, most recently, democratizing the benefits of data and AI for entire industries.” 

“This acquisition represents the culmination of nearly 40 years in which Altair has grown from a startup in Detroit to a world-class software and technology company. We have added thousands of customers globally in manufacturing, life sciences, energy and financial services, and built an amazing workforce, and innovative culture,” responded James Scapa, Altair’s founder and CEO. “We believe this combination of two strongly complementary leaders in the engineering software space brings together Altair’s broad portfolio in simulation, data science, and HPC with Siemens’ strong position in mechanical and EDA design. Siemens’ outstanding technology, strategic customer relationships, and honest, technical culture is an excellent fit for Altair to continue its journey driving innovation with computational intelligence.” 

Siemens says adding Altair’s highly complementary simulation portfolio, with strength in mechanical and electromagnetic capabilities, it is enhancing its comprehensive Digital Twin to deliver a full-suite, physics-based, simulation portfolio as part of Siemens Xcelerator.

Altair's data science and AI-powered simulation capabilities allow anyone, from engineers to generalists, to access simulation expertise to decrease time-to-market and accelerate design iterations. Additionally, Altair's data science capabilities will unlock Siemens' industrial domain expertise in product lifecycle and manufacturing processes.

Siemens expects to achieve significant revenue synergies especially from cross-selling of the highly complementary portfolios and from providing Altair full access to Siemens's global footprint and global industrial enterprise and customer base with a revenue impact of more than $500 million a year mid-term, growing to more than $1 billion a year long-term. Siemens will also achieve cost synergies of more than $150 million a year by the second year of the deal. Closing of the transaction is subject to customary conditions and is expected within the second half of calendar year 2025.  

Altair Engineering is a specialist in computational science and artificial intelligence (AI) that provides software and cloud solutions in Simulation and Analysis, Data Science and AI, and High-Performance Computing, enabling organizations across all industries to compete more effectively and drive smarter decisions in an increasingly connected world.

Founded in 1985, Altair Engineering went public in 2017 (Nasdaq) and is headquartered in Troy, Michigan (USA). Out of its more than 3,500 employees, approximately 1,400 employees work in R&D