The German industrial giant is planning to invest generously in a number of innovative projects. Among them are blockchain applications for the secure transfer of data in industry and energy trading. 

To unite the selected start-ups, the company has created a new unit. Its name, Next47, refers to the year Siemens was established.

“Siemens itself was a startup in 1847 – founded in a rear courtyard in Berlin,” said Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens AG. “With Next47, we're living up to our company founder's ideals and creating an important basis for fostering innovation as we continue Siemens' development.”

The investment is aimed to help companies in the strategic fields important for the company’s future, such as artificial intelligence and decentralised electrification. The first funding project for Next47 would be the previously announced joint development with Airbus of electrically powered planes. 

Initially, Next47 will be overseen by Chief Technology Officer Siegfried Russwurm, with offices to be open in China, Germany and the US. The project is going to last five years. “Next47 creates room to experiment and growth without the group’s organizational constraints,” Russwurm said. Founded as a telegraph company, Siemens produces a huge variety of products from fridges and gas turbines to trains and medical scanners and is known to buy out emerging technologies to stay ahead of possible competitors.

Speaking about blockchain and bitcoin, the group underlines: 

"Siemens wants to be part of this revolution and is therefore taking a two-track approach. On the one hand, Siemens experts are perpetually looking for interesting application areas in this very young market and, on the other hand, the group wants to come up with disruptive innovations...” 

A recent study by Greenwich Associates suggests that the total amount of investments in blockchain will exceed $1 billion in 2016. Financial firms and technology providers will escalate their efforts to bring blockchain to capital markets. The study shows there is a race to develop and adopt the blockchain technology, with serious amounts of money being spent on related projects. 32% of the companies working with distributed ledger have a budget of more than $5 million per year, and additional 15% spend between $2 and $5 million.

Ludmila Brus