BMW’s New CEO Bet Early on Nvidia for Lead in Factory Setup

In 2021, well before AI became a corporate buzzword, BMW AG’s production chief Milan Nedeljkovic made a bet on using Nvidia Corp.’s technology to virtually plan future factories.

Championing the experimental but digitally ambitious tools over Siemens AG’s tried and tested factory-software suite was risky. But with the first of the German carmaker’s new range of electric vehicles, dubbed Neue Klasse, rolling off factory lines — following the biggest investment in the company’s history — Nedeljkovic can feel vindicated for having used Nvidia’s photo-realistic simulations to help prepare BMW’s plants for the production.