HCLTech, SAP Expand Partnership to Advance Real-World Physical AI Solutions

HCL Technologies on Wednesday said it has expanded its collaboration with European enterprise software giant SAP to develop Physical AI solutions that embed artificial intelligence (AI) into real-world industrial and business operations.

The two companies will work together on customer projects that apply embodied AI to boost productivity, simplify operations, and support smarter decision-making in manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics, according to a statement.

Physical AI lets autonomous systems perceive, understand, reason, and perform or orchestrate complex actions in the physical world. Embodied AI is a subset of Physical AI that refers to AI with a physical body, such as robots and self-driving cars, that can sense and act in real environments.

The two firms will work on AI-led enhancements for warehouse operations, developing extensions that automate picking and sorting to improve speed, efficiency and accuracy.

They will also apply multi-agent AI models to fleet management, with the goal of optimising logistics and fleet performance at enterprise scale. In addition, the partners plan to explore embodied AI applications for 3D reality capture, enabling more advanced data capture, analysis and operational decision-making.

“Through our strategic partnership with SAP, HCLTech is pioneering the integration of cognitive robotics with enterprise systems, driving a new era of intelligent automation. Through this new collaboration with SAP, we are enabling businesses to transform operations, accelerate innovation and realize measurable value from automation at scale,” said Vijay Guntur, CTO and Head of Ecosystems at HCLTech.

Earlier this month, HCLTech launched an AI Innovation Lab in partnership with chip major Nvidia in Santa Clara, California, to help enterprises explore, incubate, and scale industry applications of physical AI and cognitive robotics.