Bain Predicts AI Will Drive Nearly Half of Industrial Automation Revenue by 2030
Nearly half of industrial automation revenue will come from AI-related applications by 2030, according to the Industrial Automation: From Control to Intelligence report from Bain & Company.
The report had two key findings:
- AI will create new industrial market value of nearly $70 billion over the next five years — a 22% increase.
- Value is shifting away from traditional control systems toward software, data, AI-enabled workflows and smart field devices.
This could turn the industry’s architecture and profit pools from a “pyramid” into an “hourglass”, according to Bain, as more than 80% of industry profit pools are expected to sit at the two ends of the “hourglass” stack, where software, data platforms and AI-enabled layers are projected to account for more than half of the total profit pool, while smart field devices capture an additional 25% to 30%, leaving the traditional control layer under increasing pressure.
Bain pointed out that companies orchestrating data, software and smart devices at scale are already achieving productivity gains of 30% to 50%, maintenance cost reductions of up to 35%, and longer asset lifetimes.
For established automation technology providers, this means that pressure is coming from above and below as switching costs for end user manufacturers are falling as software decouples from hardware and interoperability improves. Bain said the risk for established players here is not overnight disruption, but rather gradual irrelevance.
Nearly 60% of incremental industry growth by 2030 is expected to come from vertical-specific offerings that embed process knowledge, data semantics and regulatory requirements, as companies prioritize vertical depth over horizontal scale. As intelligence becomes continuous, value creation is likely to shift from point solutions to lifecycle orchestration, according to Bain’s report.
