Hitachi Rail has become the first transportation company globally to adopt NVIDIA’s latest and most powerful industrial-grade platform, NVIDIA IGX Thor.
The world-leading technology will be offered to Hitachi Rail’s customers through its digital asset management platform, HMAX. The new IGX Thor platform is set to dramatically enhance capability, providing up to 8x higher AI compute and 2x better connectivity for HMAX products.
This integration allows Hitachi Rail to offer customers advanced, real-time ‘edge’ AI processing, which is fundamental for mission-critical applications—including the operational running and optimisation of trains, signalling, and infrastructure.
The IGX Thor platform enables the powerful, real-time processing of vast volumes of data directly at the ‘edge’ (on the trains or infrastructure itself). This capability is crucial; without it, processing the same data in Hitachi Rail’s maintenance locations could take up to ten days.
By applying advanced AI-based algorithms at the edge, the HMAX platform ensures that only the most relevant, actionable insights are sent back to operational control centres. This capability is expected to deliver an unprecedented improvement in the speed that information can be shared with transport operators, significantly enhancing the potential for railway optimisation and predictive maintenance.
Giuseppe Marino, Group CEO of Hitachi Rail, said:
“AI and data are transforming railways. By adopting NVIDIA IGX Thor, we are bringing the world’s most powerful industrial-grade, real-time AI performance directly to the edge, enabling operators to better optimize their railways and infrastructure. This capability will strengthen reliability, efficiency and optimization for passengers and operators alike.”
Alignment with Global AI Strategy
The adoption of IGX Thor aligns seamlessly with the Hitachi Group’s broader strategy of harnessing the power of AI with infrastructure expertise, using its Lumada 3.0 solutions. This commitment is also demonstrated by the company’s recent expansion into North America, where it officially opened its $100 million lighthouse digital factory just outside Washington D.C. in September 2025. This facility is set to deliver the next generation of high-quality metro trains while achieving operational excellence through the deployment of “physical-world AI.”
This latest initiative with NVIDIA builds on the Hitachi Group’s broader focus to deploy HMAX across a wide range of industries and business sectors internationally as ‘One Hitachi’, aiming to address complex customer challenges globally.
