Exclusive: Schneider Electric CEO talks about how the 189-year-old energy giant is rebuilding for the age of AI

You will be coming up on your first anniversary as CEO. How was it?

My first day, I was in front of Schneider’s board of directors, and they asked me a question: What’s on your mind? So I said: Look, I think Schneider was an exceptional company. We have transformed the company, but the world is changing. We need to define what the next cycle will be at Schneider, and how we will impact this energy transition.

The world has never been so unstable and fragmented. As a company, we cannot influence the outside world, but we can adapt our company to be more flexible.

I think we have a good vision of how Schneider can excel in the next cycle, and how our technology can have an impact. So I feel good.

Do you feel that your vision has changed somewhat in the past year?

This is a very good question. There are things about geopolitics. We’re seeing this big shift in the energy transition: supply is changing with more renewable energy everywhere, but demand has changed a lot because we’re trying to electrify most of the demand in every part of the world. So this acceleration in supply and demand is happening faster than expected. This disrupts the way we will invent the technology of the future.

For example, we live in a world where electricity is primarily based on alternating current (AC). Now, you’ll have more hybrid AC/DC technology. (You can He reads More on this here.) Look at how many data centers are built every day. Compared to last year, technological disruption has accelerated dramatically. Look at all those countries that have embarked on this mission of working on supplying electrical energy with China being the fastest in the world.

What about the United States?

The trend in the United States regarding the renewable aspect is almost impossible to stop. When I talk to people who are doing projects, they say, “Look, most of these projects will be done.” People are very confused about what sustainability means. Today, we use sustainability for so many things. At Schneider we always try to build a responsible company with a positive impact, which means that when we want to deliver strong financial results in the next quarter, we always try to imagine how we are positively impacting our environment, our ecosystem. Our ecosystem includes employees, customers, partners, suppliers and countries.

We still want to be a responsible company in the short and long term. We used to call that social responsibility – it was more honest – and then it moved to ESG sustainability, and maybe the next cycle will be more about impact responsibility… You don’t have to do the energy transition just for the sake of your wallet or the planet. It’s because of demand

Is concern about enacting this transformation justified?

If you look at the total gigawatts that need to be built in the next five years, it is absolutely huge.

Starting in the United States, there is a question mark as to whether you will have enough power in the United States to support that. You need to reconnect available power versus demand. In many countries of the world, you need a permit to ensure that you have a process that makes it easy for people to set up data centers. Third, available land in some geographical areas remains a problem. You also have a shortage of manpower, such as electrical contractors, to implement. Two years ago, I would have added equipment capacity to the industry, but I believe all players, including Schneider, have built capacity now to meet demand over the next three years.

How do you want people to think about Schneider Electric?

If you think that this company provides solutions and equipment, it is not enough. We are an energy technology company, and we are your energy technology partner. We need to connect the network to the data center. We have access to facilities. We have access to super scale. Our mission is to make sure we connect the ecosystem of people and provide the technology that will make that happen. We want to help utilities be more efficient and generate more energy. The biggest problem with generating and transporting energy using fossil fuels is that you lose 50% of what you produce. With electricity, the end user can use 90% of what you produce. Everything will become more electric, more automated, more digital.

How has your time as Chief Human Resources Officer at Schneider Electric shaped your perspective in this role?

I have been with this company for 32 years. I had the opportunity to be named a leader very early in my career, and I have always had a strong belief that leadership has a powerful impact on a company. Ultimately, you get the best technology and the best brands. It’s really all about the people, and how you work effectively. When you become a head of HR, you step back, notice more in a leader, and then realize how much culture and people’s behavior are influenced by what comes from the top of the company. 90% of success depends on choosing the people you will hire in their jobs.

How do you change the tone internally to speed up the shifting speed?

There are three things I focus on: performance, simplicity, and speed of decision making. The most important thing is to make a decision. When you are in a very large company, where the leadership is very committed, you tend to be complex and that can affect your flexibility to make quick decisions and implement those decisions. So what I’m trying to do is identify the decision makers; We can never have too many cooks in the kitchen.

There is always a distinct advantage to a company that moves quickly, namely speed at the expense of perfection and execution. It’s always easier to move quickly and correct than to try to plan months ahead to see what the future might look like. The world today is so uncertain that I believe it is important to empower the people closest to the action as much as possible. That’s why I’m changing the way we work from an organizational point of view.

CEO of Novartis He recently told me that the more complex the external environment, the more important simplicity is internally.

We started two years ago already, but I’m rushing to move to the next level of Schneider’s regionalization. You have regional teams, usually commercial teams, everywhere in the world. But when you get into the supply chain, up to R&D or finance, you enter into a global organization. So what we are doing at Schneider is creating a multi-pronged model to regionalize as much of everything global as possible.

I’m building our four regions – it’s North America, it’s China/Asia, it’s Europe, and it’s International, starting here in the Middle East. I want to ensure that each region is a supply chain hub, a regional fulfillment hub for projects and businesses. So people working at the regional level can handle 80% of what they have to do. I just identify internally, where are the 20% of things that need to be truly global: in strategy, resource allocation, M&A, technology, platform, that kind of thing. As for the rest, we are trying to build these independent but interconnected regional centers. It’s not that I’m cutting Schneider into four pieces. I still keep one common layer but regionalize it as much as possible to create empowerment and agility in the way we run the company. The world is so fragmented and different that the global model we have all learned over the past 20 years is outdated.

How is the partnership different?

We learned very early in our company that if you want to have very strong market coverage, you need trading partners. With all the technological transformation – electrification, automation, digitalization – it requires an ecosystem. So technology partnerships are becoming more important to Schneider. Data centers have the fastest opportunity for growth, so of course we partner with hyperscalers. They are our customers but we need to partner with them Nvidia To understand what technology they will develop for the future, to ensure that we are able to adapt our technology and deliver solutions to hyperscale.

What is the impact of artificial intelligence?

AI helps in capturing a certain amount of data that creates more value for the customer. You can start, for example, doing preventative maintenance and so on. Agentic AI will automate it further and provide more advice. The complexity of the process will determine how quickly you can do it. Customer service is always a simple use case. When you go into deep tech operations, I can tell you that it will take a lot of time. This does not mean that AI will not help, but going to the level where everything will be replaced by agentic AI in some sectors will certainly take a lot of time. In some complex applications, you will continue to have software for the next 20 years.