Siemens – Ann Fairchild named President and CEO of Siemens USA
- Fairchild has more than 25 years of experience at Siemens
- She is to lead Siemens’ largest market globally
Siemens today announced the appointment of Ann Fairchild (54) as president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Siemens USA, the company’s largest market globally. Fairchild, who has served as interim president and CEO since October 2025, will assume the permanent role effective immediately. She will guide Siemens’ strategy and engagement across the United States, where the company employs more than 50,000 people in all 50 states and Puerto Rico and generated $24 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025.
Based on her more than 25 years at Siemens, most recently serving as general counsel for Siemens USA, Fairchild brings a deep understanding of the company’s business objectives and strategic priorities. She has played an important role in advancing Siemens USA’s growth, supporting complex transactions, strengthening governance across a diverse portfolio and enabling closer alignment across the company.
“Ann Fairchild brings exactly the right leadership for this moment,” said Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG. “As U.S. customers strengthen critical infrastructure, reshore manufacturing and continue to expand their AI capabilities, Ann’s strong, steady and collaborative leadership will enable Siemens to deliver greater value for our customers. I look forward to working with Ann to advance our ONE Tech Company program in the U.S., our largest market.”
Fairchild served for eight years as general counsel of Siemens USA, overseeing legal, compliance, regulatory, and intellectual property functions, helping the company navigate complex regulatory environments while seizing strategic opportunities.
“Siemens proudly serves tens of thousands of customers nationwide and supports the backbone of the American economy – growing manufacturing, building smarter infrastructure, transforming rail networks and developing a skilled workforce,” said Fairchild. “I’m honored to help guide our efforts in this moment of opportunity – as we bring AI to the real world and help customers become more competitive, resilient and efficient.”
Fairchild is a member of the Siemens Corporation board of directors and serves on the Board of the German American Business Council, where she brings Siemens’ perspective to transatlantic dialogues spanning policy, diplomacy and commerce. She was also recently appointed to the board of directors of Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP).
Fairchild began her career clerking for the Honorable Tommy Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, followed by a role as a litigation associate at McGuireWoods in McLean, Virginia. She joined Siemens in 1999 in the Power Generation business and has since held a series of senior leadership roles across the Legal and Compliance organization. She holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce with a concentration in finance from the University of Virginia and a juris doctor from the College of William & Mary School of Law.
SourceSiemens
EMR Analysis
More information on Siemens AG: See full profile on EMR Executive Services
More information on Dr. Roland Busch (President and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens AG): See full profile on EMR Executive Services
More information on Prof. Dr. Ralf P. Thomas (Member of the Managing Board and Chief Financial Officer, Siemens AG till May 13, 2026 + Special Advisor to the Supervisory Board and the Managing Board, Siemens AG as from May 13, 2026 till end of 2026 + Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Siemens Healthineers AG, Siemens AG): See full profile on EMR Executive Services
More information on Veronika Bienert (Member of the Managing Board and Chief Financial Officer, Siemens AG as from April 1, 2026): See full profile on EMR Executive Services
More information on “ONE Tech Company” Program by Siemens AG: See full profile on EMR Executive Services
More information on Ann Fairchild (President and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens USA, Siemens AG): See the full profile on EMR Executive Services
More information on the German American Business Council: https://www.gabcwashington.com/ + Supporting the German-American Business Community and the Transatlantic Relationship since 2004.
The German American Business Council (GABC) in Washington, D.C. was founded in 2004 as an initiative of U.S. and German companies doing business on both sides of the Atlantic. We are an independent non-profit organization that fosters transatlantic business dialogue between Germany, Europe, and the United States. Our mission is to support entrepreneurship and business growth by building trust and understanding among small, medium-sized, and global companies, while creating valuable business opportunities for our members. We are a truly German-American organization, reflected both by our board members and our general membership.
More information on Candida Wolff (Chair, German American Business Council): https://www.gabcwashington.com/officers-members + https://www.linkedin.com/in/candida-wolff-50a859b/
More information on Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose® (CECP): https://cecp.co/ + CECP empowers leading companies to turn purpose into performance through insights, benchmarks, and a trusted executive community. CECP is the only nonpartisan business counsel and network dedicated to driving measurable returns on purpose.
More than 200 of the world’s leading companies seek to improve their return on purpose through access to CECP’s solutions in research and insights, strategy and benchmarking, and convening and communications. With our companies, we harness the power of purpose for business, stakeholders, and society.
More information on Daryl Bewster (Chief Executive Officer, Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose®): https://cecp.co/the-cecp-team/ + https://www.linkedin.com/in/darylbrewster/
EMR Additional Notes:
- AI – Artificial Intelligence:
- Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems.
- As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have been scrambling to promote how their products and services use AI. Often what they refer to as AI is simply one component of AI, such as machine learning. AI requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. No one programming language is synonymous with AI, but several, including Python, R and Java, are popular.
- In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states. In this way, a chatbot that is fed examples of text chats can learn to produce lifelike exchanges with people, or an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images by reviewing millions of examples.
- AI programming focuses on three cognitive skills: learning, reasoning and self-correction.
- The 4 types of artificial intelligence?
- Type 1: Reactive machines. These AI systems have no memory and are task specific. An example is Deep Blue, the IBM chess program that beat Garry Kasparov in the 1990s. Deep Blue can identify pieces on the chessboard and make predictions, but because it has no memory, it cannot use past experiences to inform future ones.
- Type 2: Limited memory. These AI systems have memory, so they can use past experiences to inform future decisions. Some of the decision-making functions in self-driving cars are designed this way.
- Type 3: Theory of mind. Theory of mind is a psychology term. When applied to AI, it means that the system would have the social intelligence to understand emotions. This type of AI will be able to infer human intentions and predict behavior, a necessary skill for AI systems to become integral members of human teams.
- Type 4: Self-awareness. In this category, AI systems have a sense of self, which gives them consciousness. Machines with self-awareness understand their own current state. This type of AI does not yet exist.
- Machine Learning (ML):
- Developed to mimic human intelligence, it lets the machines learn independently by ingesting vast amounts of data, statistics formulas and detecting patterns.
- ML allows software applications to become more accurate at predicting outcomes without being explicitly programmed to do so.
- ML algorithms use historical data as input to predict new output values.
- Recommendation engines are a common use case for ML. Other uses include fraud detection, spam filtering, business process automation (BPA) and predictive maintenance.
- Classical ML is often categorized by how an algorithm learns to become more accurate in its predictions. There are four basic approaches: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning and reinforcement learning.
- Deep Learning (DL):
- Subset of machine learning, Deep Learning enabled much smarter results than were originally possible with ML. Face recognition is a good example.
- DL makes use of layers of information processing, each gradually learning more and more complex representations of data. The early layers may learn about colors, the next ones about shapes, the following about combinations of those shapes, and finally actual objects. DL demonstrated a breakthrough in object recognition.
- DL is currently the most sophisticated AI architecture we have developed.
- Generative AI (GenAI):
- Generative AI technology generates outputs based on some kind of input – often a prompt supplied by a person. Some GenAI tools work in one medium, such as turning text inputs into text outputs, for example. With the public release of ChatGPT in late November 2022, the world at large was introduced to an AI app capable of creating text that sounded more authentic and less artificial than any previous generation of computer-crafted text.
- Small Language Models (SLM) and Large Language Models (LLM):
- Small Language Models (SLMs) are artificial intelligence (AI) models capable of processing, understanding and generating natural language content. As their name implies, SLMs are smaller in scale and scope than large language models (LLMs).
- LLM means Large Language Models — a type of machine learning/deep learning model that can perform a variety of natural language processing (NLP) and analysis tasks, including translating, classifying, and generating text; answering questions in a conversational manner; and identifying data patterns.
- For example, virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant use LLMs to process natural language queries and provide useful information or execute tasks such as setting reminders or controlling smart home devices.
- Computer Vision (CV) / Vision AI & Machine Vision (MV):
- Field of AI that enables computers to interpret and act on visual data (images, videos). It works by using deep learning models trained on large datasets to recognize patterns, objects, and context.
- The most well-known case of this today is Google’s Translate, which can take an image of anything — from menus to signboards — and convert it into text that the program then translates into the user’s native language.
- Machine Vision (MV) :
- Specific application for industrial settings, relying on cameras to analyze tasks in manufacturing, quality control, and worker safety. The key difference is that CV is a broader field for extracting information from various visual inputs, while MV is more focused on specific industrial tasks.
- Machine Vision is the ability of a computer to see; it employs one or more video cameras, analog-to-digital conversion and digital signal processing. The resulting data goes to a computer or robot controller. Machine Vision is similar in complexity to Voice Recognition.
- MV uses the latest AI technologies to give industrial equipment the ability to see and analyze tasks in smart manufacturing, quality control, and worker safety.
- Multimodal Intelligence and Agents:
- Subset of artificial intelligence that integrates information from various modalities, such as text, images, audio, and video, to build more accurate and comprehensive AI models.
- Multimodal capabilities allows AI to interact with users in a more natural and intuitive way. It can see, hear and speak, which means that users can provide input and receive responses in a variety of ways.
- An AI agent is a computational entity designed to act independently. It performs specific tasks autonomously by making decisions based on its environment, inputs, and a predefined goal. What separates an AI agent from an AI model is the ability to act. There are many different kinds of agents such as reactive agents and proactive agents. Agents can also act in fixed and dynamic environments. Additionally, more sophisticated applications of agents involve utilizing agents to handle data in various formats, known as multimodal agents and deploying multiple agents to tackle complex problems.
- Agentic AI:
- Agentic AI is an artificial intelligence system that can accomplish a specific goal with limited supervision. It consists of AI agents—machine learning models that mimic human decision-making to solve problems in real time. In a multiagent system, each agent performs a specific subtask required to reach the goal and their efforts are coordinated through AI orchestration.
- Unlike traditional AI models, which operate within predefined constraints and require human intervention, agentic AI exhibits autonomy, goal-driven behavior and adaptability. The term “agentic” refers to these models’ agency, or, their capacity to act independently and purposefully.
- Agentic AI builds on generative AI (gen AI) techniques by using large language models (LLMs) to function in dynamic environments. While generative models focus on creating content based on learned patterns, agentic AI extends this capability by applying generative outputs toward specific goals.
- Edge AI Technology:
- Edge artificial intelligence refers to the deployment of AI algorithms and AI models directly on local edge devices such as sensors or Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which enables real-time data processing and analysis without constant reliance on cloud infrastructure.
- Simply stated, edge AI, or “AI on the edge“, refers to the combination of edge computing and artificial intelligence to execute machine learning tasks directly on interconnected edge devices. Edge computing allows for data to be stored close to the device location, and AI algorithms enable the data to be processed right on the network edge, with or without an internet connection. This facilitates the processing of data within milliseconds, providing real-time feedback.
- Self-driving cars, wearable devices, security cameras, and smart home appliances are among the technologies that leverage edge AI capabilities to promptly deliver users with real-time information when it is most essential.
- High-Density AI:
- High-density AI refers to the concentration of AI computing power and storage within a compact physical space, often found in specialized data centers. This approach allows for increased computational capacity, faster training times, and the ability to handle complex simulations that would be impossible with traditional infrastructure.
- Explainable AI (XAI) and Human-Centered Explainable AI (HCXAI):
- Explainable AI (XAI) refers to methods for making AI model decisions understandable to humans, focusing on how the AI works, whereas Human-Centered Explainable AI (HCXAI) goes further by contextualizing those explanations to a user’s specific task and understanding needs. While XAI aims for technical transparency of the model, HCXAI emphasizes the human context, emphasizing user relevance, and the broader implications of explanations, including fairness, trust, and ethical considerations.
- Physical AI & Embodied AI:
- Physical AI refers to a branch of artificial intelligence that enables machines to perceive, understand, and interact with the physical world by directly processing data from a variety of sensors and actuators.
- Physical AI provides the overarching framework for creating autonomous systems that act intelligently in real-world settings. Embodied AI, as a subset, focuses on the sensory, decision-making, and interaction capabilities that enable these systems to function effectively in dynamic and unpredictable environments.
- Federated Learning and Reinforcement Learning:
- Federated Learning is a machine-learning technique where data stays where it is, and only the learned model updates are shared. “Training AI without sharing your data”.
- Reinforcement Learning is a type of AI where an agent learns by interacting with an environment and receiving rewards or penalties. “Learning by trial and error”
- Federated Learning (FL) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) can be combined into a field called Federated Reinforcement Learning (FRL), where multiple agents learn collaboratively without sharing their raw data. In this approach, each agent trains its own RL policy locally and shares model updates, like parameters or gradients, with a central server. The server aggregates these updates to create a more robust, global model. FRL is used in applications like optimizing resource management in communication networks and enhancing the performance of autonomous systems by learning from diverse, distributed experiences while protecting privacy.
- AI Factories:
- AI Factories are specialized, high-performance computing centers designed to train, tune, and deploy artificial intelligence models at scale.
- Companies and organizations involved in AI factory infrastructure and development include Nvidia, AWS, Microsoft, OpenAI, CoreWeave, Lambda, Nebius, Supermicro, and HPE. The European Union is also establishing AI Factories through its EuroHPC Joint Undertaking to foster regional innovation.

