"Europe has the talent and infrastructure to lead a productivity revolution and the digitization of industry must be at the core of this mission," said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. "GE is committed to helping Europe develop the building blocks for their Industrial Internet that will help the continent's companies turn information into insights and insights into outcomes."

The new Digital Foundry will serve European customers and partners and will be located within the historic Le Centorial building in the 2nd arrondissement. It is the first of four foundries planned this year, establishing a global network of centers through which GE Digital will incubate local startups, collaborate with customers to develop new applications and extend the growing community of industrial developers in Europe. This first Digital Foundry will add 250 jobs in Paris, focused on engineering, data science, user experience and design thinking.

Expanding the digital industrial ecosystem
Underpinning this expanding ecosystem is Predix, GE's operating system for the Industrial Internet, and Predix.io, which allows third-party software engineers to leverage the platform’s capabilities to build, deploy and scale Industrial Internet applications within a safe, secure developer environment. Opened to customers in February, nearly 11,000 developers around the world are already building on the platform.

"The digitization of industry in Europe requires not only leadership and investment from companies such as GE and our partners - but also more collaboration between the private and public sector," said GE Digital CEO Bill Ruh. "We are building an open platform, where GE’s 14,000 developers can collaborate with our customers and partners to create new applications."

New offerings drive digital transformation
Recent studies estimate that the digitization of products and services will add more than €110 billion in annual revenue for industry in Europe over the next five years. To fuel that transformation GE has innovative products to address customer needs.

In April, GE Digital announced the release of its Asset Performance Management (APM) suite, the first set of commercially available applications to run on Predix. Today, it announced two major updates to the GE Digital software set, both of which improve its ability to service major European customers.

GE Power released new Digital Power Plant software designed to play a significant role in helping nations meet COP21 greenhouse gas emissions goals. The software will help European power customers such as Yildirim improve the efficiency and reduce emissions from coal-powered steam plants. Coal plants generate 40% of the world’s electricity. GE Power’s new software can reduce CO2 emissions from those plants by 3% and reduce fuel consumption by 67,000 tons of coal per year with the same MW of output.

Additionally, GE Digital's Brilliant Manufacturing suite will run on Predix, planned for Q3 2016. Brilliant Manufacturing is able to gather, connect and analyze data from every aspect of production and leverage those insights to help manufacturers meet production targets, while controlling costs and risk. Brilliant Manufacturing is also the technology behind GE's Brilliant Factories, which is currently in use improving GE's own operations.

In the U.K., the GE Health Cloud, designed exclusively for the healthcare industry and powered by Predix, is now installed and available. The new cloud ecosystem and its applications connects software, hardware and analytics to speed, efficiency and collaboration across care pathways and multidisciplinary teams - both inside and outside the hospital setting.

Driving outcomes with news customers and partners
Also today, GE Oil & Gas and Technip today signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore new digital solutions, focused on the design and build of new Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects. The two companies will work together to explore the application of Predix and digital solutions to the engineering, construction, commissioning, startup and operation phases for LNG facilities.

As part of the Foundry opening, GE also partnered with NUMA, the first startup accelerator in France, and government agencies including Banque Publique d'Investissement (BPI) to identify and grow high-potential ideas and startups in the region.

"Having GE's European foundry's headquarter in Paris is a great opportunity, and we will closely work with GE Digital to create and structure an innovation ecosystem around the Industrial Internet. We are confident that we can build a strong community of startups, data scientists, developers and software experts to find solutions to complex industrial challenges," said Marie-Vorgan Le Barzic, CEO, NUMA.

"Since the creation of our GE Digital business and the launch of the Predix operating system, we have nearly 11,000 developers signed up, more than 100 apps and are seeing strong customer adoption," said Immelt. "For GE internally, we know we will drive $500M in productivity. Now is the time for industrials to make the switch and to drive long-term value for their business."

About Minds + Machines
Minds + Machines Europe 2016 convenes industrial luminaries, along with university, government and technology leaders from across Europe for a day-long forum focused on the digital transformation of industry and the state of the Industrial Internet. Capgemini is the top sponsor, along with Platinum sponsors EY, Intel, PwC.

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About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) is the world's Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange of knowledge, the "GE Store," through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry.