Dassault Systèmes and Vertiv Team to Accelerate AI Factory Design and Deployment

BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 22, 2026--

Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: FR0014003TT8, DSY.PA) and Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE: VRT) today announced a collaboration to enable AI factory infrastructure to be configured, simulated and validated before construction begins. By combining Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE agentic platform with Vertiv’s critical digital infrastructure expertise, the companies aim to reduce field complexity and accelerate the path from design kickoff to productive AI capacity for NVIDIA DSX AI factories.

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The collaboration builds on the Vertiv SmartRun configurable virtual twin and extends the model-based approach to broader Vertiv AI factory infrastructure solutions, including Vertiv OneCore. Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides the systems engineering, simulation and virtual twin capabilities to configure and validate Vertiv’s pre-engineered SimReady power and cooling reference designs for AI factories based on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory reference design and NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint.

AI factories are highly coupled systems in which power, cooling, network, controls and compute must be engineered together, as changes in one domain can have significant downstream effects in others. This requires engineers to understand and validate how a complete infrastructure system will perform, before it is built and deployed.

Vertiv OneCore is a hybrid-built data center solution that integrates critical power, thermal management and supporting infrastructure. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s model-based systems engineering, simulation and virtual twin capabilities can represent Vertiv infrastructure as an integrated digital system, providing traceability and visibility into the impacts of design changes.

Using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Vertiv SimReady power and cooling assets become configurable system models that serve as the starting point for customer-specific AI factory configurations based on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory reference design and NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint. Rather than creating a fixed design, the model-based approach enables engineers to evaluate configurations, propagate design changes across disciplines, perform system-level and multiphysics validation, and generate engineering deliverables from a common environment.

This approach advances engineering toward configurable, continuously co-designed and validated AI factory infrastructure that preserves design intent from early configuration through construction, commissioning and future technology upgrades.

Targeted customer outcomes include accelerating the path from requirements to a configured and validated AI factory solution by up to 10x and cutting the defined infrastructure deployment period by up to 50%. Under the assumptions in Vertiv’s model, the combined approach can bring capacity online approximately 10 weeks sooner than a modeled conventional baseline, producing up to 30% more cumulative token output within 12 months of project kickoff at the same installed capacity. The gain results solely from earlier facility readiness and does not reflect improved operating efficiency or a measured customer result.

“The winners in AI will be those who can turn computing capacity into productive capacity fastest,” said Scott Armul, Chief Product and Technology Officer. “That requires the entire AI factory to work as one system, across compute, power, cooling and physical infrastructure. By combining Vertiv’s pre-engineered infrastructure expertise with Dassault Systèmes’ model-based capabilities, we can configure and validate that system before construction, reduce complexity in the field and help customers bring AI capacity online faster.”

“AI factories are among the most complex engineered systems being built today. That complexity demands a systems view — modeled, simulated, orchestrated and optimized in a virtual twin, before the entire factory is built,” said Elisa Prisner, Executive Vice President, Strategy, Industry, Marketing and Transformation, Dassault Systèmes. “Together with Vertiv, we are transforming standardized infrastructure knowledge into configurable virtual twins for NVIDIA DSX AI factories. Our 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows customers to explore configurations, understand the consequences of design decisions, and validate the performance of an entire system virtually, before any infrastructure exists physically.”

At NVIDIA GTC Berlin, Oct. 20-22, the companies will showcase elements of the design and deployment approach, demonstrating how facility requirements inform infrastructure configuration, how teams can evaluate power and cooling constraints virtually, and how Vertiv applies factory-built infrastructure to accelerate physical deployment. The demonstration will bring together the NVIDIA Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory reference design and NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint, Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform and model-based systems engineering capabilities, and Vertiv SimReady power and cooling assets.

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About Dassault Systèmes
Dassault Systèmes is a catalyst for human progress. Since 1981, the company has pioneered virtual worlds to improve real life for consumers, patients and citizens. Through the 3DEXPERIENCE agentic platform, AI-powered, science-based virtual twins help 390,000 customers of all sizes, in all industries, collaborate, imagine and create sustainable innovations that drive meaningful impact. For more information, visit: www.3ds.com

About Vertiv Holdings Co.
Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE: VRT) brings together hardware, software, analytics and ongoing services to enable its customers’ vital applications to run continuously, perform optimally and grow with their business needs. Vertiv solves the most important challenges facing today’s data centers, communication networks and commercial and industrial facilities with a portfolio of power, cooling and IT infrastructure solutions and services that extends from the cloud to the edge of the network. Headquartered in Westerville, Ohio, USA, Vertiv does business in more than 130 countries. For more information, and for the latest news and content from Vertiv, visit Vertiv.com.

Vertiv AI factory equipment data rendered in a virtual twin using Dassault Systèmes' 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Images Dassault Systèmes and Vertiv.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, was charged on Thursday in connection with what federal authorities alleged was a role leading a criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.

An indictment unsealed on Thursday charged Lucas and six other defendants, including several of her relatives, the Department of Justice said in a statement ahead of a news conference scheduled for 10 a.m.

Lucas self surrendered, according to a Justice Department spokesperson

The charges came after the FBI searched Lucas' hometown office and a cannabis shop in which she has a stake in May.

At the time of the search, Lucas — who has been a vocal critic of Republican President Donald Trump's administration — characterized it as an attempt to intimidate her. The Associated Press was making efforts to contact Lucas’ attorneys for comment on the charges.

The brash 82-year-old lawmaker has spent decades ascending the ranks of Virginia politics and has served since 1992 in the state Senate, where she is the president pro tempore, overseeing the chamber in the lieutenant governor’s absence. More significantly, she leads the powerful Senate finance committee, through which all legislation with any budget impact must flow. She’s used the position to stop and ultimately kill legislation she opposes.

FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that the charges allege “Lucas and a close-knit group of family members and associates orchestrated a multi-year scheme to enrich their own criminal marijuana enterprise, ‘the Lucas Enterprise’ — using Lucas’ position as Chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee to insulate the enterprise from criminal scrutiny and influencing legislation to financially benefit themselves.”

“No one is above the law," the statement said, "and this FBI will continue to follow the facts with our Justice Department and ensure those responsible for criminal conduct are held accountable.”

Lucas has been a leading voice in Democrats’ ultimately failed attempt to redistrict the state’s congressional map this year, a bid to hedge against Republican efforts in other states to redraw maps for their advantage in midterm elections.

A forceful advocate of legalizing marijuana, Lucas partnered in opening the shop, The Cannabis Outlet, in 2021, selling hemp and CBD products. While marijuana is legal to possess in Virginia, recreational retail sales of the drug are not yet underway, though shops across the state do sell other cannabis-derived products.

Lucas also runs a network of companies that provide residential, transportation and other services to adults with intellectual disabilities.

Court records related to the case for months have been sealed, though earlier this year the Department of Justice sent at least two rounds of letters notifying journalists, politicians and others in Lucas’ orbit that their communications with Lucas had been intercepted as part of a court-approved wiretap that ran for two one-month time spans.

At the time of the search, many Democrats spoke up to defend Lucas, expressing skepticism about the basis for the search, given the Department of Justice’s efforts to establish criminal conduct by perceived Trump opponents.

Lucas has publicly spoken about her ownership stake in the cannabis shop as recently as June, though her most recent financial disclosure forms do not list the business by name.

Lucas, who represents a state Senate district that includes her hometown of coastal Portsmouth, operates with a sometimes-profane, unapologetic style that’s drawn comparisons with Trump.

She amassed a six-figure following on X and national attention, using the social media platform to advocate forcefully for her priorities and to bash her critics, including former GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. She’s also occasionally blasted members of her own party, including Gov. Abigail Spanberger, with whom she’s had disagreements.

Earlier this year, Lucas helped lead Democrats’ ultimately unsuccessful plan to gerrymander the blue-leaning state’s congressional districts into a map intended to elect 10 Democrats and only one Republican. Along the way, she posted quips about four GOP members the intended map sought to oust, joking that they soon would be working at McDonald’s. She and other Democrats defended the maps as a reasonable response to Trump-backed efforts to boost the GOP’s midterm advantage in other states.

Lucas has notched several historic firsts in her career. According to a biography from the state library, in 1971 she became the Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s first female shipfitter, a physically demanding job that involves working on metal assemblies for vessels.

She launched her political career in 1984, when, the biography said, she became the first Black woman elected to the Portsmouth city council.

In her decades in the state Senate, Lucas has been a staunch advocate for abortion rights and increased public school funding and a leading voice on issues of racial justice and civil rights.

In 2019, after Democrats flipped control of the chamber, her peers elected her to serve as president pro tempore. And in 2024, she was tapped to lead the chamber’s budget committee, gaining enormous sway over any legislation tied to the state budget. In that post, she played a leading role in killing Youngkin’s proposal to bring Washington’s NBA and NHL teams to a proposed $2 billion development in Virginia.

Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.

FILE - Virginia Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, listens to debate on the Senate floor, Feb. 17, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Ryan M. Kelly, File)