Just posted to my Forbes column about a very different vision for AI agents—one that goes far beyond emails and meeting notes and straight onto the factory floor.
In the piece, I talk with Federico Martelli, CEO of Swiss startup Forgis, which is building AI agents designed to act like mini-engineers inside manufacturing plants. Instead of ripping out old equipment and replacing it with shiny new robots, Forgis layers intelligence on top of existing machines—even decades-old ones—to reduce downtime by around 30% and boost output by roughly 20%. The bigger ambition? Helping make onshoring manufacturing back to Europe and North America economically viable.
Martelli argues that competing with highly automated factories in Asia isn’t about cheaper labor—it’s about smarter systems. Forgis’ agents help factories reconfigure machines faster, spot problems earlier, and coordinate production end-to-end, while still keeping humans firmly in the loop. One early believer is Massimo Banzi, cofounder of Arduino, whose work helped define modern hardware and IoT. The takeaway: industrial AI doesn’t replace workers—it supercharges operators and engineers to make manufacturing more flexible, resilient, and competitive where goods are actually consumed.