Schneider joins OpenUSD alliance to advance digital twins
Author: Joe Peck
Global energy technology company Schneider Electric, alongside AVEVA and ETAP, has joined the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) to accelerate the development of interoperable digital twins and simulation-ready 3D assets for industrial environments.
The three companies join existing contributors such as NVIDIA, Pixar, Adobe, and Autodesk.
The announcement was made during Schneider Electric’s Innovation Summit North America in Las Vegas, which brought together more than 2,500 industry leaders to discuss the future of resilient and intelligent energy systems.
OpenUSD is an extensible framework designed to improve interoperability between software tools and data formats used to build virtual environments and industrial digital twins.
By joining the alliance, the three companies aim to advance open standards that support industrial simulation, collaborative design, and large-scale AI infrastructure planning.
Supporting next-generation digital twins
The collaboration aligns the companies more closely with NVIDIA’s vision for real-time, physically accurate digital twins that can model buildings, data centres, factories, and emerging AI infrastructure.
Many organisations now use NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to develop digital twin applications that optimise design, performance, and sustainability.
By adopting OpenUSD as a shared foundation, Schneider Electric, AVEVA, and ETAP aim to support new capabilities across:
• SimReady asset development, enabling interoperable models of physical infrastructure such as power and cooling systems for use in Omniverse-based simulations.
• Digital twin collaboration, allowing integrated views of complex systems, including data centres, energy networks, and industrial facilities built on platforms such as EcoStruxure, AVEVA, and ETAP.
• AI infrastructure planning, using tools including the NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint to support the co-design of gigawatt-scale AI factories.
These capabilities are intended to support more accurate modelling of thermal behaviour, power distribution, airflow, and other operational variables within data centres and industrial sites.
Jim Simonelli, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Data Centres at Schneider Electric, comments, “Joining the Alliance allows us to contribute to a shared digital language that empowers collaboration, simulation, and innovation across the AI ecosystem.”
Rev Lebaredian, Vice President of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at NVIDIA, notes, “To efficiently design and operate complex systems like AI factories, industries need a robust, simulation-ready foundation.
“Schneider Electric’s expertise in energy management, hardware, and software, combined with NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, will accelerate the creation of the AI factories and intelligent grids of the future.”
Expanding long-term collaboration
The three companies have an established partnership with NVIDIA across digital twin development and AI infrastructure design.
They are co-developing reference architectures and integrated hardware and software approaches to support power, cooling, and energy management for next-generation AI factories.
At the recent GTC DC event, Schneider Electric was named as a power, cooling, and energy technology partner for the NVIDIA AI Factory Research Center, which is powered by the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform.
The facility serves as a foundation for the Omniverse DSX Blueprint and supports research in generative AI, scientific computing, and advanced manufacturing.
In March 2025, ETAP by Schneider Electric released a new digital twin tool capable of accurately modelling the power requirements of AI factories.
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