SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 6, 2026--
Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501, "Hitachi") today introduced HMAX by Hitachi at CES 2026. HMAX by Hitachi is a suite of next-generation solutions that brings the power of AI to social infrastructure. By harnessing vast data from physical and digital assets, integrating advanced AI, and applying Hitachi’s unmatched domain expertise, HMAX tackles the most complex social infrastructure challenges—maximizing outcomes and value for our clients and society. These solutions are derived from the formalized HMAX design principles, integrating a dynamic collection of advanced technologies and a robust partner ecosystem that helps elevate end-system reliability and performance.
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HMAX combines data collected from physical and digital assets such as sensors, industrial equipment, and machinery with Hitachi’s domain knowledge accumulated through years of deploying operations and maintenance systems. Advanced AI technologies—i.e., perception AI, generative AI, agentic AI, and physical AI—are then applied to deliver new powerful solutions to organizations worldwide.
Hitachi’s portfolio of HMAX solutions has expanded across three key categories that will truly benefit from the power of AI:
Hitachi plans to extend HMAX into other mission‑critical domains such as data centers and financial institutions.
Bringing the Power of AI into the Physical World
Labor shortages and aging equipment challenges are increasingly more severe in physical domains like manufacturing and social infrastructure. Physical AI addresses these problems by collecting, analyzing, and operationalizing field data in real-time. Whereas traditional AI focuses primarily on information and creative generation, physical AI creates value in the tangible world through applications such as predictive maintenance, complex systems optimization, robotics and more. As such, the physical AI market is expected to reach approximately 124.77 billion USD by 2030. *1
Hitachi’s strengths in technology, data, and management of physical systems align perfectly with the world of physical AI. Drawing on over 110 years of OT experience and accumulated domain knowledge in mission-critical fields such as railways, energy, and manufacturing, Hitachi is uniquely positioned to bring the next generation of AI-powered solutions to the physical world.
"Hitachi is advancing its vision of ‘Lumada 3.0,’ which aims to lead social innovation to the next stage by integrating domain knowledge with AI,” said Jun Abe, Executive Vice President of Hitachi, Ltd., General Manager of the Digital Systems & Services Division. "HMAX is the realization of this vision, and as a true ‘One Hitachi’ initiative that transcends sector boundaries, we will bring together the collective wisdom and technology of the entire group to create unprecedented synergies. By transforming field data into actionable intelligence through advanced AI, we will powerfully drive the resolution of complex social challenges and deliver tangible value that supports the next generation of social infrastructure.”
Jun Taniguchi, Senior Vice President and Executive Officer, CEO of the Strategic SIB Business Unit at Hitachi, Ltd., added, “For many years, Hitachi has worked alongside customers in the field, overcoming numerous challenges together. Through HMAX, we aim to empower people and infrastructure, unlocking the latent potential of individuals and society. For example, HMAX delivers innovative solutions to our customers’ most complex challenges, such as enhancing operations in railway and manufacturing sites facing shortages of skilled workers and ensuring stable operation of power grids essential for the introduction of renewable energy. With the expansion of HMAX, we are pleased to take a step forward together with our customers toward realizing a harmonized society where the environment, wellbeing, and economic growth are in balance.”
HMAX Design Principles
HMAX is built on four pillars that help customers apply AI to solve problems in physical environments:
HMAX Use Cases and Deployments
The expansion of HMAX across multiple domains is already delivering tangible results.
CES 2026 Exhibition
Hitachi will exhibit at CES 2026, January 6 to 9, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. *6 HMAX, the centerpiece of Hitachi’s CES experience, will be showcased with live demonstrations at Booth 8529 in the North Hall. Hitachi will also detail its HMAX vision during the CES Foundry session Pioneering AI Technologies for the Physical World on Thursday, January 8 at 11 a.m. PT at The Fontainebleau (Discovery Stage).
To learn more about HMAX by Hitachi, visit www.hitachi.com/en-us/insights/hmax/.
About Hitachi, Ltd.
Through its Social Innovation Business (SIB) that brings together IT, OT (Operational Technology) and products, Hitachi contributes to a harmonized society where the environment, wellbeing, and economic growth are in balance. Hitachi operates globally in four sectors – Digital Systems & Services, Energy, Mobility, and Connective Industries – and the Strategic SIB Business Unit for new growth businesses. With Lumada at its core, Hitachi generates value from integrating data, technology and domain knowledge to solve customer and social challenges. Revenues for FY2024 (ended March 31, 2025) totaled 9,783.3 billion yen, with 618 consolidated subsidiaries and approximately 280,000 employees worldwide. Visit us at www.hitachi.com.
Trademark Notice: All trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.
*1 Grand View Research, Inc., Artificial Intelligence in Robotics Market (2024 – 2030), cited as the reference for the market size of AI-powered robots.
*2 Hitachi Rail Unveils the ‘HMAX’ AI Solution, Accelerated by NVIDIA, to Optimize Trains, Signaling and Infrastructure: September 24, 2024
*3 Launch of Hitachi's Digital Service, HMAX for Building: BuilMirai, as an as-a-Service Type that Transforms the Value of Buildings Beginning with a Harmonized Society: September 29, 2025
*4 Through Collaborative Creation, Daikin and Hitachi Begin Trial Operation of AI Agent Supporting Equipment Failure Diagnostics in Factories: April 22, 2025
*5 Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems Launching AI Agent Service, Part of HMAX Industry, to Help Industrial Workers with Machine Maintenance: December 22, 2025
*6 Hitachi at CES 2026: Building a Harmonized Society Through Technology: December 4, 2025
HMAX by Hitachi: the suite of next-generation solutions that brings the power of AI to social infrastructure.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — In rain, snow and bitter cold, a steady drumbeat of small protests have been held in recent months on the Ohio State University main campus with a single goal in mind: removing billionaire retail mogul Les Wexner's name from buildings where it's emblazoned.
At issue — for union nurses at OSU's Wexner Medical Center, for former athletes at the Les Wexner Football Complex, and for some student leaders who may walk past the Wexner Center for the Arts near the campus oval — is Wexner's well-documented association with the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Similar cries are arising over a Wexner-named building at Harvard University and others around the country whose names appeared in the Epstein files, including Steve Tisch, Casey Wasserman, Glenn Dubin and Howard Lutnick.
It's all part of the backlash across higher education against figures with ties to Epstein, who cultivated an extensive network including powerful people in the arts, business and academia. Scrutiny has landed on university donors as well as several academics whose emails with Epstein surfaced in the latest files, including some who have resigned.
Wexner hasn't been charged with any crime in connection with Epstein, the one-time financial adviser by whom he says he was “duped.”
But a group of former Ohio State athletes who survived a sweeping sexual abuse scandal at the school argues that the retired L Brands founder 's generosity to his alma mater is now tainted by the knowledge that Epstein was entangled in many of his family's spending decisions, including around the football complex's naming.
“Ohio State University cannot credibly separate itself from these facts, nor can it justify continuing to honor Les Wexner with an athletic facility,” their naming removal request read. It went on, “To do so is to ignore the voices of survivors, former athletes, and the broader community who expect accountability, transparency, and moral leadership.”
At Harvard, a group of students and faculty at the prestigious Kennedy School has targeted the Leslie H. Wexner Building and the Wexner-Sunshine Lobby. The renaming request submitted in March cites Wexner’s “strong ties to Epstein” and argues Epstein profited off Wexner, “which enabled Epstein to use his wealth and power to traffic and abuse children and women.”
Some Harvard students and alumni also want the Farkas name removed from Farkas Hall, which hosts the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Man and Woman of the Year. The building was renamed in 2011 following a significant donation from Andrew Farkas, graduate chairman of the Hasty Pudding Institute, in honor of his father.
Farkas had a longtime personal and business relationship with Epstein, including co-owning a marina with him in the Caribbean. He also repeatedly asked Epstein to donate to Hasty Pudding. Between roughly 2013 and 2019, Epstein regularly donating $50,000 annually to secure top-tier donor status, for a total of more than $300,000.
“As I’ve said repeatedly, I deeply regret ever having met this individual, but at no time have I conducted myself inappropriately,” Farkas said in a statement.
Pushback against buildings named for Epstein associates and others named in the Epstein files is growing on some U.S. campuses.
Just last weekend, the student body at Haverford College in Pennsylvania voted to urge President Wendy Raymond to forge ahead with the renaming process for the Allison & Howard Lutnick Library. The building is named for the U.S. commerce secretary who has faced resignation calls over his relationship with Epstein.
Raymond had said in a February open letter that she wasn't ready to do that. In a statement to The Associated Press following Sunday’s vote, Raymond said she respected the process and would respond to the resolution within the customary 30-day period.
At Ohio State, pleas against the Wexner name are making their way through a five-step review procedure, most of which takes place outside public view and with no set timeline. The university's new president, Ravi Bellamkonda said, “I think the process is thorough, fair, and open, and I will promise you that we will give each request a full consideration.”
A spokesman for Harvard confirmed the school has received the Wexner-related name removal request but would not comment further. It would be the university's second name change, after the John Winthrop House, which bore the name of a Harvard professor and a like-named ancestor, was changed to Winthrop House in July over their connections to slavery.
Tufts University, home to the Tisch Library and the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, said it continues to look at the matter. The library has moved to clarify that it was not named for Steve, but, in 1992, for his father Preston Tisch, an honored alum. The sports center removed a set of Steve Tisch's handprints during spring break. The university said that was part of a planned renovation.
UCLA's Wasserman Football Center and Stony Brook University's Dubin Family Athletic Performance Center also are named for individuals who appear in the files.
The current clamor bears some resemblance to the controversy that surrounded the wealthy Sackler family's culpability in the deadly opioid crisis, because in both cases the institutions involved had received vast sums from the family.
Some major institutions — including museums in New York and Paris, Tufts and the University of Oxford in England — did remove the Sackler name, but Harvard chose not to. In a 15-page report explaining its 2024 decision, the university said the legacy of Arthur M. Sackler, whose company Purdue Pharma made the potent opioid OxyContin, was “complex, ambiguous and debatable.”
The Epstein-tainted names are on campus buildings also are typically generous donors, as well as alumni.
Wexner, his wife Abigail and their charities have given Ohio State well over $200 million over the years, for example. That included $100 million to benefit the Wexner Medical Center; at least $15 million for the Wexner Center, a contemporary art museum named for Wexner's father, Harry; and $5 million split with an Epstein-run foundation toward construction of the football complex. The Wexners have given another $42 million to the Harvard Kennedy School.
Anne Bergeron, a museum consultant and author who specializes in the ethics of building naming rights in the cultural sector, said universities are serious about their gift acceptance standards while also recognizing that the conduct of individual donors may be judged differently over time.
“It’s no surprise that a lot of these situations arise within the university sphere, because with students — especially the younger generation — there is virtually no tolerance for being associated with anyone who doesn’t represent the best of humanity,” she said
She called this “a moment of reckoning” for universities and said they have to guard against the appearance of a quid pro quo in their building namings.
Michael Oser, a Columbus-area resident, articulated the frustration of some defenders of retaining the Wexner name in a recent letter-to-the-editor of The Columbus Dispatch.
“OSU took the money. Built the buildings. Cut the ribbons. Smiled for the photos There were no formal ‘morality clauses’ attached back then, just gratitude and applause,” he wrote. “Now, years later, some want to play moral referee while the university keeps the cash and the concrete. That’s not accountability. That’s convenience.”
Lauren Barnes, a student in the Kennedy School's master's program leading the effort to remove Wexner's name, said she struggles most days as a survivor of sexual abuse and the mother of a 14-year-old to walk into a building with a name linked to Epstein.
“Thinking about all the children in this world that deserve safety and also all the survivors on campus that have to walk under the Wexner name, I know what that’s like to have my heart race and my hands get sweaty,” she said. “I hate that anyone else has to have that feeling walking under that name and just dealing with it kind of everywhere on campus.”
One protester at Ohio State, Audrey Brill, told a local ABC affiliate that it now “feels gross” thinking of women delivering babies at OSU's Wexner Medical Center “given everything that we’re learning about where this money went” — and she feels removing Wexner's name could help.
Some protesters also want the name of Dr. Mark Landon, a prominent Ohio State gynecologist who received five-figure quarterly payments from Epstein between 2001 and 2005, removed from a visitor’s lounge in the hospital’s new $2 billion, 26-story tower. Landon have said the money was for biotech investment consulting for Wexner, not health care for Epstein or any of his victims.
This story corrects headlines, summary and story to replace “Epstein associates” with individuals “whose names appeared in the Epstein files.”
Casey contributed from Boston.
A sign is displayed on Farkas Hall, which was endowed by Harvard University alum Andrew Farkas, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
A sign is seen outside of the Les Wexner Football Complex at the Wood Hayes Athletic Center, Monday, March 30, 2026, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is seen Monday, March 30, 2026, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)
Lauren Barnes, a student in the Kennedy School's master's program, stands in front of the Leslie H. Wexner Building at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photos/Michael Casey)
The Les Wexner Football Complex at the Wood Hayes Athletic Center is seen Monday, March 30, 2026, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)
