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Leadership | History

Siemens marks 175 years of industry for America 250

By: U.S. Corporate Communications

Few companies have witnessed as much of America's industrial evolution as Siemens.

For more than 175 years, we have worked alongside the industries, infrastructure, and transportation systems that help power America's economy.

Today, we are proud to support tens of thousands of customers across the United States. Their success strengthens our communities, supports economic growth, and helps ensure the United States remains globally competitive.

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, it is an opportunity to reflect not only on our nation's history, but also on the people, companies, and technologies helping shape its future.

Siemens has been in the United States for as long as we've been a company. Today, the U.S. is our largest market globally, representing roughly a quarter of Siemens' worldwide business. We have 50,000 people serving customers in all 50 states and work with 16,000 local suppliers.

Our business priorities are closely aligned with national priorities: strengthening American manufacturing, modernizing infrastructure, and developing the skilled workforce needed for the future.

And today, those priorities are converging in new ways.

For decades, digital innovation and industrial innovation seemed to move on separate tracks. Now, as reindustrialization converges with the AI boom, technology and industry are increasingly moving together. From factories and power grids to buildings, rail networks, and data centers, a new industrial tech sector is emerging across the United States.

Our customers are at the center of this transformation, and Siemens is helping them lead it.

How Siemens is investing in U.S. manufacturing and technology

The United States is entering a new era of reindustrialization.

Across the country, companies are expanding manufacturing capacity, modernizing infrastructure, investing in AI, and strengthening domestic supply chains. At the same time, rising demand for energy and the need for a highly skilled workforce are creating new opportunities—and new challenges.

Siemens is investing across manufacturing, technologies, and workforce development to help customers grow.

Since 2021, Siemens has invested more than $1 billion in expanding our U.S. manufacturing footprint.

These investments are strengthening domestic production capacity, increasing supply chain resilience, creating high-skill jobs, and supporting local supplier networks across the country. Today, our new and expanded manufacturing facilities span California, Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Most recently, Siemens announced a $165 million investment in electrical manufacturing facilities across the Carolinas. These facilities produce critical technologies that help power data centers, industrial operations, and critical infrastructure. From protection and automation devices manufactured in Wendell, North Carolina, to busway systems produced in Roebuck, South Carolina, these solutions provide the electrical backbone needed to support America's growing demand for AI infrastructure.

As demand for data centers accelerates, reliable power distribution, electrification technologies, and resilient infrastructure are becoming increasingly important to economic growth.

At the same time, Siemens is investing in the digital technologies helping customers compete in the next era of industrial innovation. Software, simulation, and AI are becoming essential tools for designing, building, and operating the systems that power the real world.

In 2025, Siemens invested $15 billion in U.S. software companies to strengthen our leadership in digital twins, simulation, and Industrial AI. Our acquisition of Michigan-based Altair Engineering created the industry's most comprehensive portfolios for simulation, engineering, and AI-driven design.

Together, these investments reflect a simple belief: America's long-term competitiveness will depend on successfully combining the real and digital worlds.

By producing facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence, the high-speed printing press thaat Werner von Siemens helped introduce to the U.S., made one of America's founding documents more widely accessible to the public.

Siemens origins in the United States and early industrial innovation

As early as 1845—the same year Texas and Florida joined the Union—a printing innovation developed by Siemens' founder, Werner von Siemens was already being used in the United States. The high-speed printing press technology helped produce facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence, making one of America's founding documents more widely accessible to the public.

A generation later, one of the great technological challenges of the nineteenth century was connecting continents. Siemens played a pioneering role in that effort. The Siemens brothers helped lay nine of the first sixteen transatlantic telegraph cables connecting Europe and North America. Messages that once required weeks to cross the Atlantic could suddenly be transmitted in minutes, transforming commerce, diplomacy, and international collaboration.

By the end of the century, Siemens had established its first official U.S. subsidiary in Chicago.

Siemens' commitment to American manufacturing was tested almost immediately. Shortly after opening its first U.S. factory in Chicago in 1892, a fire destroyed the facility. The company rebuilt and continued investing—a pattern that would repeat itself over the decades as Siemens expanded its U.S. presence.

In 1908, Siemens established a permanent office in New York, further strengthening its presence in the American market.

As electrification reshaped American cities and industries, Siemens technologies contributed to the expansion of power systems and electrical infrastructure that fueled economic growth.

These early milestones show how Siemens' U.S. presence grew alongside American industry, infrastructure, and transportation—a pattern that continues today as customers invest in the technologies shaping America's future.

With the transatlantic cables that Siemens helped make operational, messages that once required weeks to cross the Atlantic could suddenly be transmitted in minutes, transforming commerce, diplomacy, and international collaboration.

Siemens has been in the United States for as long as we've been a company. Today, the U.S. is our largest market globally, representing roughly a quarter of Siemens' worldwide business. We have 50,000 people serving customers in all 50 states and work with 16,000 local suppliers.

How Siemens is advancing U.S. passenger rail and transportation infrastructure

One area where that commitment is particularly visible is passenger rail.

For more than four decades, Siemens has played a significant role in helping modernize American rail transportation. From light rail systems serving growing metropolitan regions to passenger locomotives and trainsets connecting cities across the country, Siemens technologies help move millions of passengers every year.

Our rail business reflects many of the themes that have defined Siemens' broader history in the United States: long-term investment, advanced manufacturing, and a commitment to deploying cutting-edge technologies.

In 1981, Siemens delivered the first modern light rail vehicle in the United States, helping launch service in San Diego at a time when many cities were reevaluating urban mobility and investing in new transportation options.

Over the decades that followed, Siemens expanded its role in American passenger rail. Today, Siemens locomotives and trainsets operate across the country, including in service with Amtrak and Brightline. These projects demonstrate how investments in transportation infrastructure can improve connectivity, support economic growth, and create more sustainable mobility options for future generations.

Just as importantly, they are supported by a growing U.S. manufacturing footprint.

In California, our Sacramento facility serves as Siemens' North American rail manufacturing hub. More recently, Siemens invested $220 million to establish a new passenger rail manufacturing facility in Lexington, North Carolina. The plant, which began operations in 2024, will manufacture state-of-the-art passenger coaches for transit operators across North America and is expected to employ more than 500 people by 2028.

Together, these facilities demonstrate Siemens' long-term commitment to American manufacturing and transportation infrastructure—investments designed not only to meet today's needs, but to help prepare the country for future growth.

Rail is one example of a broader transformation taking place across the United States. Across industries, infrastructure, and transportation, organizations are investing in technologies that will shape the country's next chapter.

How Siemens customers are shaping the next era of U.S. industry and skills

Our future in the United States is being shaped by customers across industry, infrastructure, and transportation. They form the backbone of America's economy and are helping manufacture critical products, modernize infrastructure, strengthen supply chains, expand energy capacity, and deploy the technologies that will define its next chapter.

From factory floors to power grids, from buildings and rail networks to data centers, our customers are at the forefront of a new industrial tech sector.

Digital twins, Industrial AI, advanced automation, and software-defined systems are helping organizations move faster, improve productivity, strengthen resilience, and operate more efficiently. The ability to combine the real and digital worlds is reshaping how products are designed, how facilities are operated, and how infrastructure is managed.

At Siemens, we are proud to help customers navigate this transformation.

Yet technology alone is not enough.

Technology is only as powerful as the people behind it.

As companies across the United States invest in manufacturing, infrastructure, energy systems, and AI-enabled facilities, demand for skilled workers continues to grow. In manufacturing alone, more than 400,000 positions remain unfilled, creating challenges for companies seeking to expand and modernize their operations.

The opportunity is significant. The same technologies transforming industry are creating new pathways into rewarding careers across engineering, manufacturing, skilled trades, and technical professions.

Momentum is building as more people recognize the long-term potential of these careers. The challenge is ensuring they have clear pathways to access them.

That is why Siemens continues to invest in workforce development initiatives that help connect people with the skills employers need. Programs such as Expedite for Vets are designed to accelerate pathways into high-demand careers, while our broader commitment to train 200,000 electricians and manufacturing technicians by 2030 reflects our belief that workforce development is essential to America's long-term competitiveness.

Throughout Siemens' history in the United States, a common theme has remained constant: investing in the technologies, infrastructure, and people that help move the country forward.

As America celebrates its 250th birthday, we are proud of the role Siemens has played in supporting customers across the nation.

The next chapter of American innovation is already underway. It is being written by the manufacturers, infrastructure operators, transportation providers, engineers, technicians, and skilled workers building the future every day.

Siemens is proud to partner with them as they shape what comes next.

Published: July 1, 2026; Updated: July 10, 2026