Who Owns GE Digital?

GE Digital was formally established in 2015 when General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt announced a major strategic initiative to transform GE into a "digital industrial company." The initiative reflected GE's recognition that the future of industrial equipment would be defined by software, data analytics, and connectivity as much as by the physical hardware itself.

The centerpiece of GE Digital's strategy was the Predix platform, an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) operating system designed to connect industrial machines, collect operational data, and enable analytics and machine learning applications. GE invested billions of dollars in developing Predix and building out GE Digital's capabilities, hiring thousands of software engineers and data scientists.

GE Digital's ambitions were enormous. The company aimed to become one of the world's top ten software companies by 2020, with a target of $15 billion in digital revenues. GE marketed Predix as the operating system for the Industrial Internet, positioning it as the industrial equivalent of iOS or Android.

However, GE Digital's execution fell significantly short of its ambitions. The Predix platform proved difficult to develop and deploy at scale, and GE struggled to convert its industrial customer relationships into software revenues. By 2018, GE was reporting significant losses and had scaled back its digital ambitions substantially. The company wrote down billions in goodwill related to its digital investments.

Under CEO Larry Culp, who took over in 2018, GE began a major restructuring that included significantly scaling back GE Digital. The division was refocused on serving GE's core industrial businesses (aviation, power, and renewable energy) rather than pursuing the broader industrial software market. GE Digital sold several of its software businesses and reduced its workforce.

GE Digital's Proficy software suite (for manufacturing operations management) and its APM (Asset Performance Management) software have been its most commercially successful products, serving industrial customers in manufacturing, utilities, and oil and gas. Following GE's three-way corporate split in 2024 (into GE Aerospace, GE Vernova for energy, and GE HealthCare), GE Digital primarily serves GE Aerospace's customers.