Exclusive: Honeywell Technologies launches a ‘brain behind the building’ with Nvidia and Dell. Its CTO says humans will run it for now

Honeywell Technologies’ new AI platform can run in three modes: manual, semi-autonomous and autonomous.

The company’s chief technology officer hasn’t switched on the third.

“We have not opened up an autonomy right now,” Suresh Venkatarayalu told Fortune in an interview ahead of Wednesday’s launch of Forge Cognition.

The platform, built with technology from Nvidia and Dell, puts AI agents and digital twins on top of the systems that heat, cool, secure and power buildings.

Honeywell’s launch announcement says the agents can “autonomously coordinate actions across existing systems.” Venkatarayalu says people will stay in the loop for now.

“Maybe we will start running in this mode for probably next two to three years,” he said.

After that, customers decide when to make the switch.

“For me, I wouldn’t deploy these agents without my control system in place,” he said.

That gap between what the software can do and what Honeywell will let it do is the bet.

Forge Cognition is the first major product from the slimmed-down Honeywell, which spun off its advanced-materials and aerospace businesses over the past year and now sells automation for buildings, factories and process plants.

It is also an early test of a question facing every company putting AI agents into physical operations: how much control do you give software that runs equipment people depend on? Venkatarayalu calls the platform “a brain behind a building.” For now, that brain advises, and the operators decide.

Nvidia’s 90-day test The project started with a challenge at CES in January.

As Venkatarayalu tells it, Nvidia’s leadership heard Honeywell’s pitch for autonomous buildings and asked the obvious follow-up: “Who is your lighthouse customer?” In other words, where’s the real building that proves it works? “We don’t believe in just POCs,” Venkatarayalu said, meaning proofs of concept.

Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur turned the question around and asked Nvidia, “Why can’t you be my lighthouse customer?” Nvidia took the challenge.