Hitachi and NVIDIA collaborate to evolve HMAX and achieve end-to-end autonomous operation through integrated control of physical AI

Tokyo, July 17, 2026 – (JCN Newswire) – Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501, “Hitachi”) will collaborate with NVIDIA to develop multi-agent orchestration technology that accelerates end-to-end autonomous operations in manufacturing and social infrastructure environments. This technology is intended to expand and evolve the solution suite HMAX by Hitachi (HMAX), bringing the power of AI to the real world. Through this collaboration, Hitachi will work with NVIDIA and customers participating in the ecosystem to create models for end-to-end operational optimization and autonomy. As a result, the various facilities, equipment, and systems operating at customer sites, including those from third-party vendors, are seamlessly integrated and coordinated in a vendor-independent manner.

To enable open interconnection of diverse facilities and multiple Agent AIs while maintaining data sovereignty and protecting corporate information assets, Hitachi leverages IWIM, a social infrastructure intelligence platform model, as the foundation for knowledge and reasoning and integrates it with NVIDIA Agent Toolkit software, including NVIDIA OpenShell secure runtime, NVIDIA NemoClaw agent blueprints, and open source NVIDIA Nemotron models. Through this collaboration, Hitachi and NVIDIA aim to build a “multi-agent orchestration platform” that can safely and securely orchestrate multiple AI agents even in mission-critical environments.

Additionally, we connect IWIM with the NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation model to ensure that the controls enabled by this platform can operate safely and autonomously in the physical world, establishing a highly accurate, secure, and reliable verification environment based on digital twins.

Going forward, Hitachi and NVIDIA will build a global physical AI ecosystem centered around this “multi-agent orchestration platform” and its digital twin-based verification environment. The company aims to foster the formation of a cross-industry ecosystem by inviting participation from a diverse range of customers and partners across robotics, mobility, energy, and industrial equipment. Discussions about joining the ecosystem have already begun with several companies, including a world leader in industrial robots. To support technology validation and digital transformation in production environments, Hitachi’s Physical AI FDE team combines the advanced digital engineering capabilities of Hitachi’s U.S. subsidiary GlobalLogic with Hitachi’s operational technology (OT) expertise to provide hands-on support to drive use case exploration and solution development.

Additionally, we will continue to enhance HMAX by leveraging the platform established through these technology validations and the solutions created through the support of the Physical AI FDE team. Through this pragmatic and open co-creation framework, Hitachi will work with partners to accelerate the adoption of physical AI in the real world, supporting digital transformation and sustainable growth across industries.

*1 Global integrated infrastructure model. Intelligent infrastructure model announced by Hitachi in November 2025. Developed based on multi-layered OT knowledge and deep understanding of physical phenomena cultivated over many years, it enables safe and reliable implementation of physical AI in mission-critical social infrastructure. We consistently support the design, development, and operation of equipment and systems, and achieve advanced functions through appropriate judgment and control even under complex conditions.

background

In recent years, expectations for physical AI, which combines autonomous decision-making and physical movements in operational environments, have rapidly increased. However, achieving advanced physical AI requires seamless interconnection and integrated control of different Agentic AI systems, heterogeneous robots, and the various equipment operating within their environments. Vendor-neutral and globally available open software is essential to interconnecting these diverse edge environments. Additionally, a closed LLM environment is required to ensure transcendental rights to prevent leakage of a company’s proprietary data assets.

Hitachi has been promoting AI transformation (AX) while strengthening its collaboration with NVIDIA, including participating in the NVIDIA Global System Integrator (GSI) program*2 and building the Hitachi AI Factory based on NVIDIA’s reference architecture*3. Based on this cooperative relationship and its track record to date, Hitachi has decided to proceed with this development, which balances open interconnectivity with the sovereignty of protecting its own domain knowledge. In the future, Hitachi will utilize the use cases it has accumulated as its unique “Customer Zero” and the robust AI Factory environment to work on highly effective problem solving in the physical AI field.

*2 Press release June 6, 2025: Hitachi expands collaboration with NVIDIA to accelerate AI transformation for customers around the world: Hitachi Global

*3 Press release on September 26, 2025: Hitachi announces NVIDIA AI Factory to accelerate physical AI innovation: Hitachi

Evolution of HMAX by integrating NVIDIA’s cutting-edge technology and physical AI FDE

Hitachi previously announced HMAX*4, a suite of AI solutions that support customers’ AX and are powered by NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA IGX and NVIDIA Holoscan for sensor processing, and Metropolis for real-time video intelligence*5. Through this joint initiative, HMAX will evolve into a set of solutions that autonomously and collaboratively control and operate the entire operational environment through a “multi-agent orchestration platform.”

Bridging this technological evolution to real-world deployment is the marriage of Hitachi’s unique physical AI FDE capabilities with NVIDIA’s frontier technology. Physical AI FDE is a dedicated team with deep expertise in implementing AI in complex physical environments. Building on GlobalLogic’s proven digital engineering capabilities from edge devices and hardware layers to the cloud through a “chip-to-cloud” approach to support the digital transformation of global enterprises, Hitachi will further integrate decades of domain knowledge and OT expertise in social infrastructure and evolve this capability into a physical AIFDE framework as One Hitachi. The Physical AI FDE team will be on the front lines of customer sites, leveraging a multi-agent orchestration platform developed and built by Hitachi and NVIDIA. Based on this platform, we will design and implement a customizable open hybrid architecture that flexibly combines a sovereign environment that protects customers’ domain knowledge and sensitive information with partner companies’ frontier AI. This enables comprehensive integration from legacy equipment to the latest robots from each manufacturer, enabling site-wide optimization and automation and dramatically increasing the value provided by HMAX.

*4 Press release on September 24, 2024: NVIDIA announces enhanced AI solution “HMAX”: Hitachi

*5 January 6, 2026 Press release: Hitachi expands HMAX solutions to accelerate social innovation globally across industries

Technical verification details

Hitachi is currently working with NVIDIA to build and conduct technical verification of the MultiAgent Orchestration Platform, which will serve as the core platform for implementing AI into social infrastructure. In this verification, Hitachi will combine its expertise in field operations and real-world safety requirements with NVIDIA’s agent control technology and high-speed edge inference technology to advance the following three verification efforts.

(1) Integrate knowledge and advanced global models regarding the design, development, and operation of social infrastructure.

Hitachi will connect IWIM, which aggregates Hitachi’s domain knowledge, with NVIDIA Cosmos’ global infrastructure model to simulate the physical constraints of the operational environment and mission-critical safety rules in advance. As part of the Cosmos Coalition, this verification process suppresses malfunctions caused by hallucinations unique to AI, and determines and issues safe and reliable task objectives in the operational environment based on a deep understanding of physical phenomena and operational rules and know-how.

(2) Verification of supervisory agents to enhance confidentiality and system scalability.

Hitachi leverages NVIDIA NemoClaw to validate open and secure multi-agent environments. Utilizing industry standard open protocols supported by NemoClaw, it enables autonomous agent-to-agent communication and facilitates task delegation between the monitoring agent, which acts as an orchestrator, and various equipment in the industrial field. Furthermore, by running agents in a secure environment with NVIDIA OpenShell sandbox and gateway functionality, you can avoid leakage of confidential information or unauthorized access from outside.

(3) Demonstration of real-time monitoring and cooperative control of the operating environment and equipment status.

By utilizing NVIDIA Nemotron, a multimodal open source model, Hitachi will monitor and analyze the ever-changing operational environment and the latest status of equipment at the edge in real time. The results of this research will be cross-referenced with Hitachi’s operational environment know-how, and verification will be carried out to advance optimal control according to the situation for a variety of equipment and devices with different control laws and mechanisms, such as control valves, quadruped robots, and small camera robots.

“The true potential of physical AI lies in enabling end-to-end autonomous and optimized operations through the integrated orchestration of diverse AI agents and systems. Achieving this requires open, secure, sovereign-enabled platforms as well as co-creation across organizational and industry boundaries.” “NVIDIA Advanced AI By combining the capabilities and Hitachi’s expertise in IT, OT, and products, we believe this partnership will enable integrated autonomous operations and significantly accelerate the adoption of physical AI in society. Through building an AI ecosystem, Hitachi will further accelerate co-creation with partners and customers, supporting the advancement of AX and sustainable growth across the industry, and advancing HMAX towards the Lumada 80-20 goals outlined in the business plan. We will continue to expand.”

“Autonomous operations depend on factories, energy systems, and social infrastructure connecting sensors, robots, and AI agents into systems that understand, simulate, and function as one,” said Deepu Talla, vice president of robotics and edge AI at NVIDIA. “By combining Hitachi’s operational technology and domain expertise with NVIDIA accelerated computing, simulation, world model, and agent AI technologies, Hitachi is evolving HMAX into a platform that helps customers validate and scale safer, more intelligent operations across industries.”