The German industrial manufacturing company launched its Xcelerator platform in Canada Tuesday. “We believe 2022 onwards is really the time and the advent of the metaverse,” chief technology and strategy officer Peter Koerte said, describing the new product at the Collision tech conference in Toronto Thursday morning.  (The Logic)

Talking point: The platform is already used by two major car manufacturers in Ontario, Siemens Canada’s senior vice-president of digital industries Joris Myny told The Logic. It creates a digital twin of a factory receiving live data from machine sensors, Siemens Canada CEO Faisal Kazi said, adding that the platform can help improve energy efficiency, predict maintenance needs, and test solutions for problems in a virtual environment before applying them in the real world. Canada is home to Siemens’s global research centre for industrial cybersecurity, smart grids and building sensors. It’s not the only company exploring metaverse products for work. Microsoft partnered with Meta last year to provide productivity software on the Quest Pro, but reportedly cut its entire Industrial Metaverse Core team earlier this year.