Hitachi and Microsoft Enter Milestone Agreement to Accelerate Business and Social Innovation with Generative AI
4.6.2024 04:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501) and Microsoft Corporation announced a projected multi-billion dollar collaboration over the next three years, that will accelerate social innovation with generative AI. Through this strategic alliance, Hitachi will propel growth of the Lumada business, with a planned revenue of 2.65 trillion yen (18.9 billion USD)*1 in FY2024, and will promote operational efficiency and productivity improvements for Hitachi Group’s 270 thousand employees.
Specifically, Hitachi will embed the Microsoft cloud, Azure Open AI Service, Dynamics 365, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and GitHub Copilot into Lumada solutions to provide innovative solutions for the energy, mobility and other industries to deliver better outcomes for businesses and society. In addition, the two companies will promote joint projects to address pressing business needs such as bolstering cloud services, enhancing security, and mitigating the environmental footprint of data centers, which have become an increasing area of focus with the growing use of generative AI.
“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)*1 in GenAI to capture new growth opportunities in FY2024. 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*2, and the development of a field-extended metaverse that runs on Microsoft Teams,” 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, and by applying generative AI, to improve the productivity of frontline workers, which will become even more important in the future. By combining our capabilities, we can help solve the issues faced by our customers and society, and contribute to a more sustainable future.”
“We are entering a new era of AI with the promise to deliver transformative business outcomes across every role and industry,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “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.”
Hitachi’s Business Transformation
Hitachi’s Generative AI Center*3 and Microsoft will collaborate to improve operational efficiency and application development within the Hitachi Group by using Copilot for Microsoft 365 and GitHub Copilot. Hitachi will also use Azure OpenAI Service to enhance its customer service. As part of Hitachi’s group-wide transformation, Hitachi will combine Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot with its systems development expertise to maintain high quality and improve productivity for mission-critical system development. Hitachi’s internal validation confirmed that when its detailed system design knowledge was incorporated with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot, the application source code could be properly generated 70-90% of the time, resulting in high quality output.*4
Hitachi Rail is leveraging GenAI for predictive maintenance, enhancing equipment monitoring and refining forecast accuracy. This proactive approach prevents breakdowns, increases service quality, reduces operating expenses, and augments safety. For example, a cloud-based platform on Microsoft Azure was utilized to streamline data visualization and analysis, empowered by AI to furnish data-driven insights to digitally monitor rail infrastructure. These insights were translated into actionable steps for Network Rail, enhancing decision-making for predictive maintenance of overhead lines.
Develop innovative digital solutions
Hitachi is enhancing its Lumada solutions by incorporating the capability of generative AI. As part pf the initiative, Hitachi has already started to use Microsoft’s Generative AI for JP1 Cloud Services, a SaaS version of JP1, its integrated operations management software with approximately 20 thousand customers. This will accelerate response times to address failures, and enable improved operational efficiencies for IT departments, financial and public institutions. In an internal verification test conducted earlier, Hitachi confirmed that the time required for the operator to make an initial response to an alert was reduced to approximately two-thirds by using generated AI to respond to the alert and displaying the source of the citation, such as a manual, that provided the basis for the response.
In addition to this, Hitachi and Microsoft will also support the energy transition with improved access to and strengthening of digital solutions for asset performance management, energy trading, and risk management to reduce downtime and increase profitability. Increased computing power and cloud infrastructure are both critical to scaling these applications. Hitachi Energy’s Enterprise Software Solutions technology and its partnership with Microsoft is key to optimizing the energy network, from generation, through transmission and distribution, and ultimately in delivering reliable and sustainable energy to customers.
Joint projects to promote sustainable growth
Multiple Hitachi Group Companies including GlobalLogic, Hitachi Digital Services, and Hitachi Solutions, deliver a wide range of digital engineering, IT & managed services, and application services for the cloud. Additional development efforts through this partnership will focus on enhancing this broad range of services with the aim of sustainable innovation with Microsoft.
As the impact of CO2 emissions from AI on the global environment increases, Hitachi and Microsoft will work toward zero carbon, starting with a data center project in Europe, to reduce environmental impact.
Strengthen digital skilling and talent development
Hitachi will train more than 50 thousand GenAI Professionals. As part of the partnership, Hitachi will incorporate training to acquire advanced software development skills using GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service into the program to develop GenAI Professional, talents who support customers’ transformation using AI.
*1 | Forecast as of April 26, 2024, calculated at 140 yen to the U.S. dollar. |
*2 | Hitachi News Release (June 26, 2020) “Hitachi and Microsoft form a strategic alliance to advance next-generation digital solutions for manufacturing and logistics across Southeast Asia, North America and Japan” |
*3 | Hitachi News Release (May 15, 2023) “Hitachi Establishes New ‘Generative AI Center’ to Accelerate Value Creation and Improve Productivity in the Lumada business by promoting the use of Generative AI” |
*4 | Hitachi News Release (May 21, 2024)“Hitachi to Accelerate System Development Transformation with Generative AI" |
About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi drives Social Innovation Business, creating a sustainable society through the use of data and technology. We solve customers’ and society’s challenges with Lumada solutions leveraging IT, OT (Operational Technology) and products. Hitachi operates under the 3 business sectors of “Digital Systems & Services” – supporting our customers’ digital transformation; “Green Energy & Mobility” – contributing to a decarbonized society through energy and railway systems, and “Connective Industries” – connecting products through digital technology to provide solutions in various industries. Driven by Digital, Green, and Innovation, we aim for growth through co-creation with our customers. The company’s revenues as 3 sectors for fiscal year 2023 (ended March 31, 2024) totaled 8,564.3 billion yen, with 573 consolidated subsidiaries and approximately 270,000 employees worldwide. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company’s website at https://www.hitachi.com.
About Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240603649131/en/
Contact information
Media Contacts
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777,
rapidresponse@we-worldwide.com
Corporate Communications, Digital Systems & Services, Hitachi, Ltd.
koho@itg.hitachi.co.jp
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Workiva Advances Regulatory Work with AI Innovation15.9.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Workiva Inc. (NYSE: WK), a leading, audit-ready platform for trust, transparency, and accountability, unveiled dozens of new product and platform innovations at Amplify 2026, the company’s annual conference attended by thousands of finance, accounting, sustainability, risk, and compliance leaders. Workiva Debuts Agent Studio Workiva introduced Agent Studio, a landmark platform capability that empowers users to quickly build, customize, and deploy AI agents in Workiva's trusted platform. By combining AI reasoning with Workiva's native platform capabilities, enterprise knowledge, and governed workflows, Agent Studio enables users to automate sophisticated manual business processes without writing any code. Organizations can enrich agents with company-specific knowledge and context, tailor them to their own processes, and schedule automations to execute recurring work. “With Agent Studio, we're putting the power to build in the hands of the people who know the work and their company the b
Study: Heatwaves Increase Cough Urge, Which Salt Aerosols Reduce15.9.2026 16:15:00 EEST | Press release
SC Therapeutics, with University North Carolina, Imperial College London, and Boston University, announced publication on Tuesday in Nature Scientific Reports of results from a multi-institutional study indicating that the aridity inherent in heatwaves increases cough hypersensitivity in human airways by collapsing mucus onto cilia in a manner common to chronic respiratory diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, and asthma. The researchers find that alkaline aerosols of magnesium salts reverse mucosal collapse for several hours, and reduce cough hypersensitivity as reflected in placebo-adjusted suppression of daily cough bout rate (59%, p=0.03) and persistence of suppression post treatment for 1 to 3 weeks in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 10 refractory chronic cough patients. “Paris recorded 5,764 excess deaths between 17 June and 2 July, a period of time during which we report atmospheric aridity in the city increased approximately 3-fold relative to the 35 year a
ADM’s Fourth Annual Regenerative Agriculture Report Highlights Growing Resilience Across the Food System15.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
ADM (NYSE: ADM), a global leader in innovative solutions from nature, today released its fourth annual regenerative agriculture report, showing how its programs are supporting farmers, strengthening agricultural supply chains and delivering measurable environmental outcomes around the world. “Resilience starts on the farm. By improving and protecting soil health, farmers can be better equipped to adapt to changing conditions and maintain productive operations,” said Greg Morris, SVP and President, Ag Services and Oilseeds, ADM. “That resilience can extend across the value chain, helping strengthen the food system we all depend on.” In 2025, ADM’s regenerative agriculture programs engaged more than 56,000 farmers across approximately 4.6 million acres, 11 countries and 10 crops. Compared with regional benchmarks, the programs resulted in approximately 946,000 metric tons of CO₂e reductions. “ADM views agriculture as a powerful way to meet evolving customer needs, and our work in regener
Diligent Unveils New Agentic Capabilities in Diligent One to Power the Future of Governance, Risk and Compliance15.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Diligent, the AI leader in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, today announced a major enhancement to Diligent One, its native AI platform, at Gartner’s Enterprise Risk, Audit and Compliance Conference (ERAC). This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260915941016/en/ “For many organizations, GRC work is slowed by fragmented systems, manual coordination and time-consuming reporting processes,” said Brian Stafford, President and CEO of Diligent. “Our latest agentic capabilities help teams cut through that complexity by connecting context, surfacing what matters and driving faster execution — while keeping governance and professional judgement at the center." An orchestration agent that coordinates work and approvals The orchestration agent in Diligent One gives GRC professionals a natural-language interface to coordinate audit and risk work. Instead of simply answering questions, it enables users to describe
Unifocus Launches AI-Powered Platform to Transform Workforce and Operations Management in Hospitality15.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
The global hospitality technology provider, Unifocus, has announced the launch of its newest AI platform, Unifocus Claira. Unifocus Claira is an industry first end-to-end workforce management and operations platform, purpose-built to give hoteliers and above-property hospitality organizations complete visibility across the workforce lifecycle through one cohesive system. By replacing the patchwork of disconnected tools, multiple technology stacks and siloed data systems that have traditionally been used to manage labor and operations processes, Unifocus Claira delivers one connected AI-native platform, providing customers with a comprehensive and organized view of their workforce and operations data. This unified data foundation powers advanced AI capabilities designed to accelerate decision-making, improve operational performance and drive business growth. Importantly, Unifocus Claira is also the first end-to-end platform of its calibre, purpose-built specifically for the select servi
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom