More than 1,000 OEMs and suppliers now exchanging data through Catena-X network
Catena-X participation has grown fivefold in just nine months with 1,069 automotive OEMs and tier suppliers now exchanging data through the platform, as studies indicate €385 million in potential gross annual value for large-scale manufacturers.
The number of active participants sharing data through the Catena-X network reached 1,069 in September 2026
Catena-X
Five years ago Catena-X was a standards proposal with a governance structure and not much else to show for it. That is no longer a fair description. Its user base has grown from 182 active participants in December 2025 to 1,069 in September 2026 – a more than fivefold increase in just nine months.
Catena-X defines an active participant as an OEM or supplier exchanging data through the operating ecosystem. Separately, 195 organisations have signed up as Catena-X association members. Furthermore, 61 of the Berylls Top 100 automotive suppliers are now exchanging data through the network.
Studies point towards significant cost savings
Two independent studies have outlined the potential value of Catena-X to automotive companies that use the platform. A study led by Audi, Volkswagen Group, the Technical University of Munich and the Fraunhofer Institute looked at three Catena-X applications and estimated gross annual savings of between €150 ($174) and €220 ($255) per vehicle before investment and running costs, with quality and error traceability identified as the leading source of value. Separately, Accenture and Fraunhofer examined six applications, including energy-load management and condition and bottleneck management, and put the potential EBIT uplift at up to 7 per cent after costs are accounted for.
Put together, a reference model for a manufacturer producing 2.1 million vehicles a year suggests roughly €385 million ($447 million) in potential gross annual value, or about €183 ($212) per vehicle, before investment and running costs are deducted. That figure understates the case rather than overstates it, since neither study included the compliance-effort savings that a standardised data layer could also unlock.
Payback periods reported from live applications are short enough to be credible. Quality management pays back in around six months, certificate management in under a year, and product carbon-footprint management in around 14 months, according to application-level models cited in the release. Ford, Flex and Micron have already put that carbon-footprint application to work, exchanging verified primary emissions data across three tiers and arriving at a calculated footprint 46% lower than one based on industry averages, a reminder that better data changes the number itself, not just how quickly it is produced.
The future of the automotive industry depends on trusted collaboration across company boundaries. Catena-X enables transparent and sovereign data exchange, creating the foundation for greater resilience, efficiency, and sustainable value creation.
Yanni von Roy-Jiang, head of procurement and supplier management, Mercedes-Benz
The role of governance
None of this works without the less visible part of Catena-X, which is trust and identity rather than data itself. The system's founding principles, trusted digital identities, interoperability, data sovereignty and industry governance, allow manufacturers to verify who they are exchanging data with and retain control over how their own data is used once it leaves the plant. That sounds like plumbing, and it is, but plumbing is exactly what has been missing from most attempts at cross-company data sharing in manufacturing and supply chain to date.
"Modern industry needs a common trust layer that allows every company to verify who it is dealing with, understand the data it receives and control how its own data is used," said Hanno Focken, managing director for operations, governance and scaling at Catena-X. "Our opportunity in the AI era lies in combining generations of industrial expertise with a trusted data layer that lets companies – and ultimately autonomous systems – work across organisational boundaries while retaining control of their data. Making trust and governance executable reduces transaction costs and creates the foundation for industrial AI at scale."
"Five years on from Catena-X's founding, shared rules, identities and standards now operate at industrial scale across the global automotive value chain, laying the foundation for an industry-wide digital twin of the automotive supply chain and the next generation of trusted industrial AI," he added.
The same trust architecture is now being tested outside Europe. A pilot between BMW and CATL has led to the launch, in July, of a cross-border data link between China and Europe, with Zhonglian set to operate core Catena-X services in China from mid-November 2026.
Reaching smaller suppliers
Scaling among large OEMs and tier-one suppliers was always going to be the easier half of the problem. The harder task is extending productive use into the smaller and mid-sized suppliers that make up the deeper tiers of the automotive supply base, where IT resources are thinner and the case for adopting a new data standard has to be made line by line.
"The availability of supply chain data is a critical success factor in mastering major challenges in automotive business. Further increasing cost pressure makes standardized and automated data exchange a 'must-have'; high administrative costs of managing and sharing data across different systems and channels are simply no longer affordable," explained Georg Stalter, head of sustainability management at WITTE Automotive. "For this reason, we have decided to request all our direct serial suppliers to onboard with Catena-X to share data, and to guide them through all necessary steps."
To soften the cost of that onboarding, a €23 million ($27 million) Data Space Accelerator is available until the end of 2026, offering eligible smaller companies up to €15,000 ($17,400) for onboarding and certificate management, and the same again for a second use case such as verified carbon-footprint data exchange.
The next test
Catena-X marks its fifth anniversary in Munich on October 15, with priorities that include deeper use across more supplier tiers, interoperability between regional data ecosystems, and new standards for software bills of materials and trusted AI. The network has already cleared the harder test of proving manufacturers will actually connect to it in numbers. What comes next is whether the smaller suppliers who make up most of the automotive value chain find the case as compelling as the majors already have.
Catena-X is a long game and everybody needs to be starting now. The automotive industry is well into its digital transformation, looking to drive efficiency, take cost out and improve productivity. Catena-X defines the standards, defines the configuration and has the mechanism. With all that in place, the entire industry can go from top to bottom through the supply chain efficiently and cost-effectively.
John H. Farrell, Catena-X board member and executive vice president and COO of Magna International
