According to Revathi Advaithi, CEO of Flex, industrial competitive advantage in the coming decade will be shaped primarily by energy.
From her perspective, electrification, AI computing, and the modernization of the power grid are coming up against energy systems that were not designed to support any of this.
Currently, technological and operational limitations are affecting a wide range of key industries across the board. In sectors such as healthcare, automotive, cloud computing, networking, and manufacturing, customers frequently face the same challenges related to power shortages and insufficient thermal capacity. Compounding these obstacles is the growing scarcity of strategic partners with the engineering capabilities needed to address the level of complexity demanded by the market.
Flex Ltd. is a global partner in advanced manufacturing and supply chain management. With 150,000 employees in 30 countries, it provides design, engineering, and services to sectors such as healthcare, automotive, industrial, and data centers.
In fiscal year 2026, Flex reported revenue of $27,914 million, an 8.1% increase year-over-year. Its net income reached $880 million, a 5.0 percent increase.
Industrial Competitive Advantage
For Advaithi, manufacturing has once again taken center stage. For a generation, the Flex industry was organized around costs. Now, it is reorganizing itself around resilience and capacity.
In addition to energy, two other factors are driving this change. The first is artificial intelligence (AI). The development of the physical infrastructure needed to train and support cutting-edge models constitutes the largest concentrated capital investment cycle the digital economy has ever experienced.
At its core, this is a manufacturing challenge. It requires power, thermal management, switching equipment, busbars, racks, liquid cooling systems, and integrated systems that, five years ago, did not exist at such a high level of density. Flex is one of the few companies in the world capable of offering solutions that span the entire chain—from the power grid to the chip—an area in which it has been investing for years.
Short Value Chains
The second factor is regionalization. Tariffs, export controls, and lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic have led Flex’s customers to move their production closer to their sales markets.
The company has an infrastructure of more than 50 million square feet spread across more than 30 countries. This includes nearly 7 million square feet across 19 facilities in the United States and approximately 8 million square feet in Mexico.