Honeywell Sees Physical AI Gain Foothold in Business World

Tech conglomerate Honeywell is seeing artificial intelligence play a larger role in the physical world, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Jan. 27).

Anant Maheshwari, president and CEO of global regions at Honeywell, said these “physical AI” projects saw widespread adoption last year, according to the report.

Over 200,000 sites have implemented these tools for enhancing energy efficiency or boosting productivity in airports, hospitals and factories, he said, per the report.

“Every building needs energy efficiency, it needs a better way of providing safety and security, it needs a better way of providing productivity for people,” Maheshwari said, according to the report.

Honeywell isn’t the only company touting the benefits of physical AI. In July, real estate giant JLL said companies are sacrificing a chance to save money by not using AI to optimize their offices, factories and facilities.

“Companies incur ongoing operating expenses in commercial real estate, which include paying for leases, utilities, maintenance, repairs and the like,” PYMNTS reported July 21. “This is different from capital expenditures, or the amount of money spent if the company builds its own offices or plants. By finding inefficiencies in how offices and facilities are run, AI systems can help companies renegotiate leases, consolidate underused workspaces and optimize energy use, among other tasks.”

In another report last year, PYMNTS examined other manifestations of physical AI, such as Amazon’s deployment of its Vulcan robot, Walmart’s use of physical AI systems across its distribution network, and GXO Logistics’ expansion of its physical AI pilots.

“These examples show how enterprises are deploying physical AI not as experimental projects but as core operational infrastructure that stabilizes throughput, lowers cost and provides real-time visibility into physical workflows,” the report said.

Maheshwari also said Honeywell is using lessons learned from the pandemic to ensure its supply chains can hold up amid ongoing tariff-related interruptions, according to the Bloomberg report.

“The trade order in the world is shifting, it’s moving a lot more to bilaterals from standard global supply chains,” Maheshwari said, per the report. COVID “was a great wake-up call to everybody in creating supply chains that could work within local ecosystems. We did that, and therefore we are very well set up to work with uncertainties that come in with any kind of bilateral changes.”

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