Infosys wins Knorr-Bremse AI managed-services deal via Topaz platform
Infosys has announced a long-term managed-services collaboration with Knorr-Bremse AG, the Munich-headquartered manufacturer of braking and safety-critical systems for rail and commercial vehicles. The engagement sits within Knorr-Bremse's internal Tech4Value (T4V) programme, which the company describes as a broad shift toward a value-driven IT operating model.
Under the agreement, Infosys will take responsibility for the full enterprise application stack across both of Knorr-Bremse's divisions: Rail and Commercial Vehicles. That scope runs from core ERP and data platforms through to engineering and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. The company did not disclose contract value, duration or the number of Infosys personnel assigned to the engagement.
What Infosys Topaz brings to the deal
The engagement will be delivered through Infosys Topaz, the company's AI-led services layer, which combines generative and agentic AI tooling with domain expertise across SAP, data engineering and PLM. Infosys says the intent is to move beyond conventional managed services toward outcome-based delivery: measurable productivity gains, faster issue resolution and automated service governance.
Satheeskaran Navaratnam, Chief Digital Officer and VP Transformation and Governance IT at Knorr-Bremse, said: "By working with Infosys, we aim to make our technology estate as optimised and reliable as the systems we build for our customers, ensuring that every layer of our infrastructure is equipped to support the pace of change our business demands."
Jasmeet Singh, EVP and Global Head of Manufacturing at Infosys, framed the rationale in terms of operational continuity: resilient enterprise applications are, he argued, as essential to a safety-critical manufacturer as the physical components it ships.
Market context
The manufacturing IT outsourcing market is well-established, but the positioning of AI tooling as a differentiator in managed-services bids is a more recent dynamic. SAP-centric transformation deals have historically been competed by the major systems integrators, including Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant and TCS, alongside SAP's own services arm. Infosys has been pushing Topaz as a cross-sector AI wrapper across this traditional SI work, attempting to reframe commodity application management as AI-enabled outcome delivery.
For Knorr-Bremse, the regulatory backdrop adds complexity. As a supplier of safety-critical components to the rail and automotive industries, any changes to its core enterprise application landscape carry compliance obligations under sector-specific functional-safety standards, notably ISO 26262 for automotive electronics and EN 50128 for railway software. Enterprise transformation programmes in these industries must demonstrate that IT changes do not introduce risk to certified engineering processes, which raises the governance bar for the kind of AI-led automation Infosys is proposing.
The broader managed-services sector is also navigating the EU AI Act, which, as its obligations phase in through 2026 and 2027, will require vendors deploying agentic AI in consequential enterprise workflows to apply conformity assessments and maintain human-oversight controls. Whether Infosys Topaz's agentic capabilities fall within the Act's high-risk or limited-risk classifications will depend on the specific workflows deployed, a question the companies have not addressed publicly.
Knorr-Bremse generated revenue of approximately €7.9 billion in its most recently reported fiscal year, operating across more than 100 sites in 30 countries. The scale of that footprint means a full-estate managed-services engagement represents a significant operational dependency on a single integrator, a concentration risk that enterprise IT governance teams typically scrutinise closely. Near-term milestones to watch include confirmation of which SAP release the transformation targets and any disclosed productivity metrics from early Topaz deployments.