Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric SE is a French multinational that positions itself as a global energy technology leader in energy management and industrial automation. The company describes its mission as electrifying, automating, and digitalizing industries, businesses, and homes to drive efficiency and sustainability, with technologies serving buildings, data centers, factories, infrastructure, and electrical grids.

Founded in 1836 (originally as Schneider & Cie), it is one of the oldest industrial firms still operating at scale. It is headquartered in Rueil-Malmaison, France, and trades publicly on Euronext Paris (ticker SU) as a component of the CAC 40 index. Olivier Blum serves as CEO (appointed in late 2024), with Jean-Pascal Tricoire as chairman.

Its portfolio spans electric power distribution and grid automation, industrial control systems and PLCs, building and home automation, switches and sockets, critical power and cooling for data centers, and energy management software — increasingly delivered through IoT-enabled and AI-powered, software-defined architectures. The company reported revenue of approximately €38.15 billion and net income of about €4.43 billion in 2024, with roughly 160,000–177,000 employees operating in over 100 countries.

Recent strategic moves underscore its relevance to innovation in this space: expanding in sustainability and data-center infrastructure, including finalizing its acquisition of climate-consulting firm EcoAct (2023), agreeing to acquire a controlling stake in liquid-cooling specialist Motivair (2024), and partnering with Nvidia on data-center cooling system design (2024).