“We are sitting on a massive amount of data,” Busch said Monday during a Bloomberg TV interview. “This is one of the most industrialized economies in the world, and again, small and medium sized enterprises, large ones, they’re creating data from their buildings, their manufacturing sites, their engineering.”

Siemens is deploying AI to make industrial producers’ manufacturing systems more efficient. The company has a partnership with Nvidia Corp. for its AI applications and recently acquired software makers Altair Engineering Inc. and Dotmatics.

Busch reiterated that Europe needs to make significant changes to its regulatory structure if it wants to compete with US software companies.

The interview, done jointly with Deutsche Bank AG CEO Christian Sewing, focused on an initiative by more than 60 of Germany’s leading companies to bring at least €100 billion ($116 billion) in new projects to help spark growth in Europe’s biggest economy.