Sanofi CEO turns to 'cobots' and AI to zap manufacturing costs

Sanofi, which has moved purposefully into high technologies to get more from its manufacturing, will lean heavily on that strategy to shrink costs and fatten margins. Using robotics, artificial intelligence and new generation manufacturing should save it half a billion euros in annual costs by 2022. So says Sanofi CFO Jean-Baptiste Chasseloup de Chatillon who was filling in some details of new CEO Paul Hudson's €2 billion cost-savings plan laid out Tuesday during Sanofi's investor conference. "It is a leapfrogging of productivity. It reduces cycle time," Chasseloup de Chatillon said on a webcast of the conference.