Schneider Electric, the French company that makes electrical equipment for buildings, data centers, factories and power grids, said on Monday, Oct. 5, that it has agreed to buy PTC, a software company based in Boston, for $205 a share in cash. That values PTC's shares at about $22.6 billion, or $23.7 billion once PTC's debt, minus its cash, is added. Schneider is pitching the deal as a bet on AI: it says the combined company will give AI agents, AI that can carry out tasks on its own instead of only answering questions, the information they need to be useful in industry.
PTC makes computer-aided design (CAD) software, which engineers use to design complex physical products on screen, and product lifecycle management software, which keeps a product's engineering records from its first design through to service. It has more than 30,000 customers and had about €2.4 billion (about $2.7 billion) in revenue in 2025, Schneider says. Schneider already runs an industrial software business, AVEVA, and has a separate, still pending deal to buy Cognite, whose AI tools it also wants to fold in.
Schneider's case for the deal is that AI in industry is only as useful as the data it can draw on. Schneider's software already gathers data on how plants and energy systems run; PTC adds the records of how products and machines were designed and built. Schneider says joining the two gives AI agents the background information they need, across a product's whole life from design and build to operation and maintenance. Chief executive Olivier Blum called the combination "the industry's most complete Software & AI powerhouse."
Schneider's offer is 42.3 percent above PTC's last closing price before the announcement. To raise the money, it plans to sell about €5 billion to €6 billion of new Schneider shares to investors and borrow about €16 billion to €17 billion, and it expects to pause buying back its own shares in 2027 and 2028. Both companies' boards have approved the deal, but it needs approval from holders of a majority of PTC's shares and from regulators, and Schneider expects it to close by the third quarter of 2027. Schneider's own shares fell almost 9 percent in Paris on Monday morning.
Schneider forecasts about €800 million in extra sales from the combination, mostly from selling each company's products to the other's customers. Among the risks PTC lists, customers may be slower than it expects to organize the product data that AI tools depend on. It is not yet clear whether regulators will ask for changes, or what new AI products Schneider and PTC will offer customers, and at what price.