Ralliant’s Amir Kazmi On Wiring AI Into Critical Infrastructure

Ralliant's Chief Technology and Growth Officer Amir Kazmi is wiring artificial intelligence into the very fabric of critical infrastructure—energy grids, water treatment plants, and transportation networks—by applying AI-powered workflows and a founder's mindset to precision technology. In a recent interview with Forbes, Kazmi detailed how the company is unifying roles across engineering, operations, and data science to accelerate decision-making in sectors where failure is not an option. The timing is urgent: aging infrastructure in the United States and Europe demands modernization, while cyber threats to utilities are rising. Ralliant, a relatively young company, has carved a niche by deploying AI agents that monitor and adjust industrial control systems in real time, reducing downtime and preempting failures. Kazmi, a former executive at Palantir and Microsoft, argues that the biggest bottleneck is not technology but organizational silos. "You need a single team that owns the outcome from code to concrete," he said, highlighting Ralliant's unified role structure. The company's platform ingests sensor data, weather feeds, and maintenance logs, then recommends or automates actions—such as rerouting power during a surge or adjusting water pressure after a pipe break. Early deployments at a midwestern utility have cut unplanned outages by 40 percent and saved millions in repair costs. Critics warn that embedding AI into critical systems introduces new vulnerabilities, including adversarial attacks on model integrity. Kazmi acknowledges the risk but counters that legacy systems already fail catastrophically; AI, he argues, can detect anomalies faster than human operators. Regulators are taking note: the U.S. Department of Energy recently launched a task force on AI-hardened infrastructure. Meanwhile, Ralliant is expanding into European markets, partnering with telecom providers to secure 5G-backed industrial networks. The broader implication is clear: the next wave of AI deployment will not be about chatbots but about silently running the world's essential services. As climate change intensifies stress on infrastructure, the race to harden it with intelligence—and the debate over who controls that intelligence—will define the decade ahead. Look for Ralliant's upcoming pilot with a European water authority and the release of its open-source audit tool for AI-in-Infrastructure safety.